just perl script

[semna]

Hi
I am a new user in perl. I want to make a subroutine that takes the taxonomy-id as input and returns the list of leaf nodes as output and I wrote this script but it's not working. Any suggestion? Thanks in advance.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
my @leafnodes_list = getleafnodes (my $taxid);
print @leafnodes_list;
sub getleafnodes
{
my ($taxid) = @_;
print "type Taxid number:";
$taxid = <STDIN>;
chomp $taxid;
foreach (@_){
"getz [taxonomy-ID:$taxid] >_ tax_down";
return @_;
}

}

[zhidkov.ilia]

Hi semma,
your question fits better to PerlMonks:

http://www.perlmonks.org/

Can you give an example of expected INPUT and expected OUTPUT, it might help to figure out where is your bug in script.

Ilia

[semna]

HI,
This is actually used to make a tree by using taxonomy ID. input is just a number and output is a list of different names and numbers that I used getz command for that.
thanks

[gringer]

Here's what your code does as it is

I need to re-order your code a tiny bit to get my head around how it works...

 1 #!/usr/bin/perl
 2 use strict;
 3 sub getleafnodes {
 4   my ($taxid) = @_;
 5   print "type Taxid number:";
 6   $taxid = <STDIN>;
 7   chomp $taxid;
 8     foreach (@_){
 9       "getz [taxonomy-ID:$taxid] >_ tax_down";
10       return @_;
11    }
12 }
13 my @leafnodes_list = getleafnodes (my $taxid);
14 print @leafnodes_list;

Up to line 3, things look good, although I'd suggest 'use warnings;' as well.
Line 4: the scalar variable $taxid is set to the first argument of the function getleafnodes. Nothing is done with this variable before it is assigned a new value on line 6.
Line 5: Print (without line breaks) the string "type Taxid number:"
Line 6: read a single line from standard input, store the result (including ending line break) in the scalar variable $taxid.
Line 7: Remove the final line break from the variable $taxid.
Line 8: loop through the arguments of the function (@_), setting the default scalar variable (i.e. $_) to that argument.
Line 9: Do absolutely nothing with the string "getz [taxonomy-ID:$taxid] >_ tax_down" -- no printing, no evaulation, no assignment.
Line 10: return the arguments of the function (@_), breaking out of the loop in the process
Lines 11-12 are never reached by any code
Line 13: create an array @leafnodes_list, which is set to the return value of the function getleafnodes, given an argument that is an undefined value, created due to the initialisation of a new scalar variable $taxid. The function returns the arguments sent to the function, so this will be an array containing a single element, namely an undefined value.
Line 14: print the elements of the array @leafnodes_list, not separated by anything. As the only element in the list is the undefined value, this will not print anything.

So, if you're lucky, this function will probably output one thing, "type Taxid number:". If that is what you wanted to do, here's a simpler way to do it:

#!/usr/bin/perl
print "type Taxid number:"

Could you please explain in a bit more detail what you were trying to do?