G'day Mark.Allan,

"Does this make sense? it was hard for me to explain never mind write"

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure: hopefully, I got the gist of it. Here's some issues I found:

• There's some code that just won't work, e.g. a number of regexes have \s but the data you're trying to match (as shown) has 0, 1 or 2 spaces.
• You have a complicated way of determining parent and child config: was there a reason you didn't just look for PARENT CONFIG and CHILD CONFIG.
• In your description you have: e.g. "a hash called results{keyid}" — that's not the name of a hash, the key keyid appears nowhere in the code, there's a $results{$key} in the code but %results is neither declared nor populated.
• Three times in your description, you have: "$results{Łkey}{$dist_attr}" — obviously, your '$' key works; whatever sigil you intended when you entered 'Ł' is almost certainly wrong; there's nothing like that in the code you posted so I can't even guess what was intended.
• In your code, you have a regex where you're matching and capturing the literal text 'completion' — you may have intended to capture something else; regardless, the captured data (which would have been $2) is not used anywhere.
• There maybe others.

Here's a script that captures the data you want. I'll leave you to format the output.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use autodie;

my $config_file = 'pm_1056046_parse_config.txt';
my $gen = 'parent';
my %cfg;

{
    local $/ = "DEPLOYED\n";
    open my $config_fh, '<', $config_file;

    while (<$config_fh>) {
        $gen = 'child' if /CHILD CONFIG/;
        /(\w+)\s+HOLDS\s+(\w+)/;
        $cfg{$gen}{$1}{holds} = $2 if $gen eq 'child';
        push @{$cfg{parent}{$1}{equals}} => /(total_\w+)/g if $gen eq 
+'parent';
    }

    close $config_fh;
}

for (keys %{$cfg{child}}) {
    print "$_ : @{$cfg{parent}{$cfg{child}{$_}{holds}}{equals}}\n";
}
[download]

Output:

$ pm_1056046_parse_config.pl
first_distribution : total_finish total_cancel
second_distribution : total_cancel
third_distribution : total_finish total_cancel
forth_distribution : total_dist total_finish total_cancel
[download]

Ken

Thanks for your input, I'll pick up on this tomorrow but one thing I failed to highlight is that ###parent config#### and #####child config##### don't actually exist in the file, it's was merely me defining the structure which I forgot to mention

The exact file looks likes this

DEPLOY :
        SWG_Lower HOLDS SWG_Depot
        EQUALS:=
                total_dist: completion= SUCCESS
                total_finish: completion= SUCCESS
                total_cancel:completion=SUCCESS
 DEPLOYED

DEPLOY:
        LOADED_Lower HOLDS SWG_Depot
        EQUALS:=
                total_finish: completion= SUCCESS
                total_cancel: completion=SUCCESS
DEPLOYED

DEPLOY:
        CONFIG_Lower HOLDS SWG_Depot
        EQUALS:= 
                total_cancel: completion=SUCCESS
DEPLOYED

DEPLOY
        first_distribution HOLDS LOADED_Lower
DEPLOYED

DEPLOY:
        second_distribution HOLDS  CONFIG_Lower ;
DEPLOYED

DEPLOY :
        third_distribution HOLDS LOADED_Lower;
DEPLOYED

DEPLOY :
        forth_distribution HOLDS  SWG_Lower ;
DEPLOYED
[download]

"... one thing I failed to highlight is that ###parent config#### and #####child config##### don't actually exist in the file, it's was merely me defining the structure which I forgot to mention"

You actually wrote:

"I have the following text file of configuration details."

It's important to pay attention to details. I can only provide advice on dealing with the input you describe: I can't guess that some of what you provide is correct and other parts are not. Furthermore, the computer can only deal with the input (as you describe it) in your code; for instance, any attempt to match either version of the input with the pattern '#parent config#' would fail.

You may think I'm being pedantic; however, if you look back to the issues I originally raised, you'll see that all six of them are related to a lack of attention to detail.

For your latest version of your input, you can modify my code by changing

$gen = 'child' if /CHILD CONFIG/;
[download]

to

$gen = 'child' unless /EQUALS/;
[download]

and get the same output values.

-- Ken

So naturally the first thing I need to do is get into your headspace -- easiest way is to take your data and code and run it to get a feel for what it is trying to do.

So I wrapped your code in a subroutine (mainly to isolate my code from yours) and called it.

Either you didn't give me everything, or something is seriously wrong with your code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

foreach my $configFilename (@ARGV)
{
    if (open FH, '<', $configFilename)
    {
        &processConfigFile();
    }
}

exit;

__END__

C:\Steve\Dev\PerlMonks\P-2013-09-27@1720-Config-Parent>perl configPare
+nt.pl
Bareword "LOADED_Lower::" refers to nonexistent package at configParen
+t.pl line 32.
Global symbol "$line" requires explicit package name at configParent.p
+l line 19.
Global symbol "$line" requires explicit package name at configParent.p
+l line 21.
Global symbol "$key" requires explicit package name at configParent.pl
+ line 22.
Global symbol "$line" requires explicit package name at configParent.p
+l line 24.
Global symbol "$base_type" requires explicit package name at configPar
+ent.pl line 26.
Global symbol "$line" requires explicit package name at configParent.p
+l line 28.
Global symbol "%base" requires explicit package name at configParent.p
+l line 30.
Global symbol "$base_type" requires explicit package name at configPar
+ent.pl line 30.
syntax error at configParent.pl line 32, near "LOADED_Lower:: total_fi
+nish"
Global symbol "%results" requires explicit package name at configParen
+t.pl line 35.
Global symbol "$key" requires explicit package name at configParent.pl
+ line 35.
Missing right curly or square bracket at configParent.pl line 39, at e
+nd of line
configParent.pl has too many errors.
[download]

So we'll need to get past this before I'm going to be of much use to you.

The full code I used is here so we can compare apples to apples as we work through this:

Now where Im struggling is as follows.. The child IDs need to inherit the PARENT attributes if distributions holds one of the PARENT IDS, example

Great, ddumper^{Basic debugging checklist} up a \%parent and \%child and I'll help you inherit-into-child attributes from parent:)

Oh, you say you don't have a %parent and a %child? First thing I would do I create those :)

Would you like to hear more?

Hi thanks for input , the parent config is dumped out in %base hash, the distribution IDs are matched against $key ?

Hi thanks for input , the parent config is dumped out in %base hash, the distribution IDs are matched against $key ?

I'm sorry, what?