Using the Perl Xbase module to read xBase databases

I recently had occasion to read some xBase database files (e.g. dBase or FoxPro files). What I was doing needed some of the capabilities of Perl. I found a module that reads xBase databases directly: Xbase.

Here is a simple set of code to read all of the records in an xBase database:

use strict;
use Xbase;

# Create a new Xbase object
my $database = new Xbase;

# Open the database
my $db_name = 'C:exampledatabase.dbf';
$database->open_dbf($db_name);

# Get the last record number
my $end=$database->lastrec;

# Go to the first record
$database->go_top;

# Loop through the records
for my $i (1..$end)
{
 # Print the record number
 print $database->recno . ". ";

 # Get the fields in this record
 my @fields = $database->get_record;

 # Loop through the fields
 for my $f (0..$#fields)
 {
  # Print the values of each field
  print $fields[$f] . "\t";
 }
 print "\n";

 # Go to the next record
 $database->go_next;
}


# Print information about the database,
# including the names of the fields
print $database->dbf_type . "\n";
print "Last update: " . $database->last_update . "\n";
print $database->dbf_stat;

# Close the database
$database->close_dbf;

This code is adapted from the perldoc documentation of the Xbase module.