This is a coded solution to the issue, a mostly plain one.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
my $tag = shift;
die ("You need to enter a tag.\n") unless ( $tag =~ /\w+/ );
my $count = 0;
my @headers = ();
my %hash = ();
while(my $d = <DATA>) {
$count++;
chomp ($d);
if ( $count < 2 ) {
@headers = split/:/, $d;
}
else {
my @temp = split/:/, $d;
push @{$hash{$headers[$_]}}, $temp[$_] for ( 0 .. $#headers );
+
}
}
if ( defined($hash{$tag}) ) {
print "$tag = ",join( ',', @{$hash{$tag}} ), "\n";
}
else {
print "Tag $tag not found.\n";
}
__DATA__
AGE:EYES:HAIR
32:BLUE:BLONDE
54:BROWN:BROWN
And the results are:
C:\Code>perl show_tags.pl foo
Tag foo not found.
C:\Code>perl show_tags.pl AGE
AGE = 32,54
C:\Code>perl show_tags.pl EYES
EYES = BLUE,BROWN