Perl's in built grep works on elements. How do i make i behave the way i intend? Do i have to store the line into an array or something? Confused..please help..

Hello again Tara,

You have the line:

$final_data = ` grep "$key_pattern" "${indir}/${lkp_file_name}" |cut -
+d"|" -f"$data_location"`;
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Here is one way to write this in pure Perl (untested):

my $file = $indir . '/' . $lkp_file_name;

open(my $fh, '<', $file)
    or die "Cannot open file '$file' for reading: $!";

my @matched_lines = grep { /\Q$key_pattern/ } <$fh>;

close $fh
    or die "Cannot close file '$file': $!";

my @fields;

for my $line (@matched_lines)
{
    my    $field = (split /\|/, $line)[$data_location - 1];
    chomp $field;
    push  @fields, $field;
}

$final_data = join "\n", @fields;
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(There should also be some error handling to deal with the possibility that a matched line contains an insufficient number of fields.)

Hope that helps,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum

Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,