Hi, teamassociated, I'm sure a wiser monk than I will chime in eventually, but if I have some time later I will try to tackle your quest. Be forewarned: I usually use a different approach to handling such data files and will probably rewrite the code in my own way, and the first thing I will do is make it not so fearsome looking (also known as 'ugly code'). Later...

Update: Hm, I'm having trouble seeing how your results come from your inputs. I assume the input data is is a shortened version of that that produced the displayed results.

Update 2: Thanks for more input data! Fom the desired output you show, it looks like all you want is a sorted list of client partition ID's with each ID followed by a sorted list of available backing devices. Am I right, or am I missing something?

Update 3: Here's a solution I think will work (may need tweaking for your needs). No fanciness, just results. Note that the ID is not sorted numerically but that can be fixed if need be.

Update 4: I've tidied up the code a bit. Now we need to address what I believe is your fundamental problem: comparing two logs to see what has changed, and the code below only reads in one log file and converts it to a hash. Regarding the issue of keeping a hash sorted, module Tie::Hash::Sorted may be the answer, but I believe that is more work than need. I'll update this later after some more investigation (including finding an old hash comparison function I made a long time ago).

Update 5: My dim skull is zeroing in on your problem, albeit slowly. Note that I used a HoH instead of a HoA, and the code I was thinking of was based on the Perl Cookbook, Recipe 5.12. But all that is for nought at the moment if your data file can vary so much (if I understand correctly). It might be useful to see first if the code I've provided (updated to track the LUN) gives an accurate read of all your logs. For instance, your latest input indicates the LUN is pertinent but I see nowhere in your original code that you capture it. After we can read a log reliably, then we can tackle finding the differences between two logs.

Update 6: I suggest you use pseudo code to describe what you want to do. And use the actual names for the items in the logs you need to deal with.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

# ignore lines beginning with:
my $regex1 = qr/^\-|^mirrored|^physloc|^svsa|^vtd/i;
# beginning of a chunk of interest:
my $regex2 = qr/^vhost/i;

my $ifil = 'sorted-hoa-input-data.txt';

my %h; # hash to keep client partition IDs

open my $fp, '<', $ifil
  or die "$ifil: $!";

my ($id, $stat, $bd, $lun);
while (defined(my $line = <$fp>)) {
  next if $line =~ m/$regex1/;
  if ($line =~ m/$regex2/) {
    my @d = split ' ', $line;
    $id = $d[2];
  }
  elsif ($line =~ m/^status/i) {
    my @d = split ' ', $line;
    $stat = $d[1];
  }
  elsif ($line =~ m/^lun/i) {
    my @d = split ' ', $line;
    $lun = $d[1];
  }
  elsif ($line =~ m/^backing\s+device/i) {
    my @d = split ' ', $line;
    $bd = $d[2];
    if ($stat eq 'Available') {
      $h{$id}{$bd} = 1;
    }
  }
}

# print the results
for my $k (sort keys %h) {
  print "\n$k\n=>\n";
  print "Available\n$_\n" for (sort keys %{$h{$k}});
}
[download]

-Tom

Hi Tom, yes the input was shortened by a lot. Here you are. Thx so much!!

# cat lsmap-all.out
SVSA            Physloc                                      Client Pa
+rtition ID
--------------- -------------------------------------------- ---------
+---------
vhost0          U8284.22A.21AAF8V-V1-C22                     0x0000001
+2

VTD                   vtscsi23
Status                Available
LUN                   0x8100000000000000
Backing device        xxxxxxxrqdb1_r1.c24452093bce96e2f48808ed3f7d7eac
Physloc
Mirrored              N/A

VTD                   vtscsi24
Status                Available
LUN                   0x8200000000000000
Backing device        xxxxxxxrqdb1_r2.dd39252cef8d45a4c24d59be438ef60d
Physloc
Mirrored              N/A
[download]

Read more... (39 kB)

See my update 2 in original response.

See update 5 at Re: sorted HoA, now what?.

sorry I had a __DATA__ section I had forgot to include the output in the original node called 'current desired output.' FYI I am using the find module to get the latest log files for the comparisons. Comparisons need to happen twice total, once for each pair of VIO servers. Yes your code works just fine to get a solid starting point. But here is my scratch code under __DATA__ using HoA. Thank you!!!

File::Find::finddepth({'wanted', \&__wanted15B}, '/opt/r2configs/vios1
+5b');


sub __wanted15B  {
    use strict 'refs';
    my($dev, $ino, $mode, $nlink, $uid, $gid);
    $lsmap15b = $name if ($dev, $ino, $mode, $nlink, $uid, $gid) = lst
+at $_ and int -M(_) <= $minutes * 60 and /^lsmap-all\.out\z/s;
}

__DATA__
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper \%lsmap15a;
print "\n=============================================================
+==\n";
print Dumper \%lsmap15b;


#for my $clientdata16A ( sort keys %lsmap16a ) {
#   print RLOG join ("\n\n", "$clientdata16A\t==>\n\t@{$lsmap16a{$clie
+ntdata16A}}\n\n");
#}
#
#for my $clientdata16B ( sort keys %lsmap16b ) {
#   print RLOG join ("\n\n", "$clientdata16B\t==>\n\t@{$lsmap16b{$clie
+ntdata16B}}\n\n");
#}

for my $clientdataA ( sort keys %lsmap15a ) {
   print RLOG join ("\n\n", "$clientdataA\t==>\n\t@{$lsmap15a{$clientd
+ataA}}\n\n");
}

#for my $clientdataB ( sort keys %lsmap15b ) {
#   print RLOG join ("\n\n", "$clientdataB\t==>\n\t@{$lsmap15b{$client
+dataB}}\n\n");
#}
print "=" x100,"\n\n";
#foreach(
#    sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] }
#    map { [ $_, $lsmap15a{$_}->[1] ] } keys %lsmap15a) {
#        print join "\n", $_->[0],' => ',@{$lsmap15a{$_->[0]}
#    };
#    print "\n\n";
#}

foreach(
    sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] }
    map { [ $_, $lsmap15a{$_}->[1] ] } keys %lsmap15a) {
        print join "\n", $_->[0],' => ',@{$lsmap15a{$_->[0]}
    };
    print "\n\n";
}
[download]

See update 4 at Re: sorted HoA, now what?.

See update 6 at Re: sorted HoA, now what?.