Algorithm To Select Lines Based On Attributes

~~David~~ has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I would like to know if there is a more efficient way of doing the following, or recommendations on how to make this more robust, smaller, faster, etc... I have a list of up to 1M lines. Each line contains a DEFECT number, followed by up to 30 attributes.

DEFECTID ATTR1 ATTR2 ... ATTR30
[download]

I need to be able to select DEFECTIDs that match certain criteria, select a random sample of those, and then add them to a data set.
I currently have a rules hash that I read in from a local file that has the following structure: $hash->{RULENUMBER}->{RULETYPE} = value I want all the rules to be additive ( so if I get 10 defects from rule1, and 8 defects from rule2, my final set would contain 18 defects ). I also need to be able to negate the rule by adding an ! in the value

I have the following algorithm / code working, but I was wondering if it could be better ( one caveat is that I can't generalize and loop through some genereric rule because some are text rules, some are ranges, some are equivalencies, etc. ).

    DEFECT:
    foreach my $defect ( @$list ){
        # $summary is my pseudo object,
        # this line converts each defect line into a hash
        # whose keys are the attributes desired to be selected
        my $line = parseLine( $summary, $defect );
        if ( ! $line ){ next DEFECT };
        RULE:
        foreach my $rulenum ( keys %$rulelist ){
            #  one example rule, but there are many..
            if ( defined $rulelist->{$rulenum}->{REGION} ){
                my $rule = $rulelist->{$rulenum}->{REGION};
                if ( $rule =~ s/!// ){ # handles negation
                    if ( $line -> {REGIONID} == $rule ){ next RULE };
                }
                elsif ( $line -> {REGIONID} != $rule)  { next RULE };
            }

        }
    #  i create a filtered list in the $summary hash
    push @{$summary->{FILTEREDLIST}->{$rule}}, $defect;
    }
[download]

The problem is that I have a ton of rules, and looping through each rule for every defect seems to be overkill. I was just wondering if there is a more efficient way of doing this using some kind of parallel approach...
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Update: Fixed typo pointed out by hbm

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom