Yes, this helps tremendously. Actually, your suggestions helped me make, what for me is, a quantum leap in the use of Perl.
I am stuck, however, on the loop you suggested to output the processed @col arrays. I understand how you loaded them. And that, apparently, they are ready to be output. But the closest I've come getting anything out of them is the following: __________________________________________________ #!/usr/bin/perl # use with: # perl jamescolumnsample testing.txt use strict; use warnings; #open CON, 'testing.txt' or die "File error: $!"; #my @CON = <CON> ; my(@col1, @col2, @col3); my $col = 1; while (<>) { if ($col == 1) { push @col1, $_ } elsif ($col == 2) { push @col2, $_ } else { push @col3, $_; $col = 1; next; } $col++; } # that should load @col1, @col2 and @col3 # can you come up with an output loop for them that goes here? my($first, $last, $add, $city, $state, $zip) = split /\t/, $col1[$col]; printf "\n%s %s\n%s\n%s %s %s\n", $first, $last, $add, $city, $state, $zip; Any futher help with this would be appreciated. Bill J. __________________________________________________ On Tue, 23 Dec 2003, James Edward Gray II wrote: > On Dec 23, 2003, at 12:17 AM, Bill Jastram wrote: > > > After taking a look at your last suggested script I have a short > > question: > > > > At what point does this script read in information from the > > source file 'testing.txt'? > > > > Is it during the 'while (<>)' statement? If so what would the syntax > > be? > > Yes, you've got it. > > while (<>) { > > } > > is a construct for writing Unix-like filter apps. It reads one line at > a time, from all the files passed as args to the script or STDIN, if > none are given. This is extremely handy. > > For example, if you wanted to combine two text files for your mailing > labels, you would just need to change how you call it: > > perl script_name testing.txt other_file.txt > > ...or even... > > perl script_name *.txt > > ...for all the .txt files in the current working directory. > > Hope that helps. > > James > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>