title: Perl error "Illegal octal digit '8'" when reading in URL
body: <p>I am trying to format a .txt file to fit the format my lab is using to upload data for a project. Within the .txt file are URLs that I am using as IDs for blog entries. However, when I pass them as STDIN to my Perl script I get this error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Illegal octal digit '8' at Desktop/blog.txt line 3, at end of line
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is the URL it is failing on: </p>
  
  <pre><code>http://thealbinobean.blogspot.com/2013/08/we-are-all-miley-cyrus.html
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I understand that the error occurs because Perl is interpreting the "08" as an octal number, but I can't figure out a way for Perl to interpret the entire URL as a string instead. Here is my code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>use strict;
  use warnings;
  
  my $count = 0;
  my $blogName;
  my $entryID;
  
  # desired format:
  # {{ID=URL}}{{USER=BLOG NAME}}
  # Blog entry on one line
  # "&lt;ENDOFBLOG&gt;"
  
  foreach my $line (&lt;STDIN&gt;) {
      if($count == 0) {
          $blogName = $line;
      } elsif($line =~ /^http/) {
          $entryID = $line;
          print "{{ID=$entryID}}{{USER=$blogName}}";
      } elsif($line eq "&lt;ENDOFBLOG&gt;") {
          print "&lt;ENDOFBLOG&gt;";
      } elsif($line !~ /^\s*$/) {
          print $line;
      }
      $count++;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Question: How do I get Perl to interpret the input as a string in order to avoid this octal interpretation?</p>