Question for OZO - PERL date and time

A while back you posted this code on one of my questions, I never used the __DATA__ I need to replace that on the "while( <DATA> ){" line with a variable i tried while($var_records){ but the script stop working after that, how can I do this?

below is the code as I have now: it hangs I think it's on a infinite looping because of the variable on the "while"
#----------------------------------------------------

$var_records = qq~
2007|3|21|00|00||00|01||SYS|employee1
2007|3|21|00|00||00|01||SYS|employee2
2007|3|21|00|00||00|01||SYS|employee3
2007|3|21|00|00||00|01||SYS|employee4
2007|3|21|00|00||00|01||SYS|employee5
2007|3|21|00|00||00|01||SYS|employee6
2007|3|21|00|00||00|01||SYS|employee7
2007|3|21|00|00||00|01||SYS|employee8
2007|3|21|00|00||00|01||SYS|employee9
2007|3|21|00|00||00|01||SYS|employee10
~;

%schedule;
while($var_records){
    (@date,@start,@end,$employee);
    (@date[0..2],@start[0,1],@end[0,1],$employee)=(split/\|/)[0..2,3..4,6..7,10];
    push @{$schedule{$employee}},["@date",$start[0]*60+$start[1],$end[0]*60+$end[1]];
}

sub available{
    (@date,@start,@end);
    # local $_=shift;  #sorry, this should not have been left here
    (@date[0..2],@start[0,1],@end[0,1])=@_;
    @available;
    ($d,$s,$e)=("@date",$start[0]*60+$start[1]-30,$end[0]*60+$end[1]+30);
    while( my($k,$v) = each %schedule ){
        push @available,$k unless grep{$d eq $_->[0] && $s < $_->[2] && $e > $_->[1]}@$v;
      #print qq~@available,$k unless grep{$d eq $_->[0] && $s < $_->[2] && $e > $_->[1]}@$v <BR><BR>~;
    }    
    return sort @available;
}

print join"\n",available(2007,03,21,12,30,13,31),'';

Start Free Trial