Update: I went with tilly's suggestion to use unpack, however I'm not sure that I did this efficiently. I first did an unpack into 2 columns, then broke it up from there, unpacking each column. This actually runs slower than my regex version, but it is a little nicer on the eyes. Suggestions are very welcome!
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use Text::Soundex;
my $PHONE_LIST = "$ENV{HOME}/phone_list";
my %seen;
my $cntr;
if(@ARGV == 0 || $ARGV[0] eq '-?' || $ARGV[0] eq '-h') {
print "\nUsage: $0 <last name> ...\n\n";
exit 1;
}
open(PL, "$PHONE_LIST") || die "Can't open $PHONE_LIST: $!";
while(<PL>) {
foreach my $name (@ARGV) {
my $code = soundex($name);
my @name_list;
undef @name_list;
my ($column_one, $column_two) = unpack("a40a40", $_);
if($code eq soundex(split(/,/, $column_one))) {
@name_list = unpack("a18a5a7", $column_one);
} elsif($code eq soundex(split(/,/, $column_two))) {
@name_list = unpack("a18a5a7", $column_two);
}
if(defined(@name_list)) {
$seen{$name}++;
if(++$cntr == 1) {
printf("\n %-24s %-9s %-5s\n ",
"Last, First M", "Ext", "Rm#");
print "=" x 40, "\n";
}
printf("%-25s %-8d %-5s\n", @name_list);
}
}
}
foreach my $name (@ARGV) {
if(! exists($seen{$name})) {
print "\nNot found: $name";
}
}
print "\n";
close(PL);