I suppose it does look a little bizarre. Actually, my goal is a little more complex. We have a simulation that outputs data files, but often up to 90% of the data is redundant. So I'm trying to write a filter for the data. I have to:
1. open and load the file 2. strip all comments (marked with a #) and blank lines off the top 3. sort by column 4, then by column 3 4. remove all lines at the top that have a 0 in column 5 5. write the comments + sorted lines back out to a new file Unfortunately I'm new enough at perl that I've only got steps 1 and 2 to work so far... I got some great help here on the list for step 3, though the code at <http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/publ/tutorial/perl/FMTEYEWTK/sort.html> seems much more concise. I just haven't gotten it to work on my array instead of a string. - B __________________ On Apr 8, Bryan R Harris said: >$file = "somefile.dat"; >open (FILE, $file) || die("Couldn't open $file: $!\n"); >@_ = <FILE>; >close(FILE); >while ($_[1] =~ /^[#\n]/) { push(@comments, shift(@_)); } >print "@comments"; This is a rather bizarre way to do this task, by the way. It also fails in some cases -- if the FIRST line of the file starts with a # or is blank, it gets pushed to @comments, even though you're trying to prevent that. Here's how I would write the code: open FILE, "< $file" or die "can't read $file: $!"; while (<FILE>) { print unless /^[#\n]/; } close FILE; -- Jeff "japhy" Pinyan [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pobox.com/~japhy/ RPI Acacia brother #734 http://www.perlmonks.org/ http://www.cpan.org/ ** Look for "Regular Expressions in Perl" published by Manning, in 2002 ** <stu> what does y/// stand for? <tenderpuss> why, yansliterate of course. [ I'm looking for programming work. If you like my work, let me know. ] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
