Hello 2015_newbie, and welcome to the Monastery!

Since Perl v5.6, you can use lexical filehandles, which behave like other scalar variables. In this case, store the filehandles in a hash with each filehandle keyed to the corresponding filename base. The following code should give you the idea:

#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @carslist = qw(DATSUN_BLUE TOYOTA_MAROON ELANTRA_YELLOW);
my %cars;

for (@carslist)
{
    unless (exists $cars{$_})
    {
        my $file = 'tmp/' . $_ . '.txt';
        open(my $fh, '>', $file)
            or die "Cannot open file '$file' for writing: $!";
        $cars{$_} = $fh;
    }
}

my $pattern = join '|', @carslist;
   $pattern = qr/$pattern/;
my @strings;

while (<DATA>)
{
    chomp;
    my @fields = split;

    if (($fields[1] eq '1'  ||
         $fields[1] eq '0') &&
         /$pattern/)
    {
        push @strings, $_;

        print { $cars{$fields[4]} } $fields[0], ',', $fields[4], "\n"
            if /engineer/ && !/,-,/;
    }
}

for (@carslist)
{
    close $cars{$_}
        or die "Cannot close file '$_': $!";
}

print "Strings:\n";
print "$_\n" for @strings;

__DATA__
1250 1 engineer office DATSUN_BLUE office 67 page30 text
1500 1 billing office MERCEDES_TAN office 98 page 40 txt
1500 7 billing office JAGUAR_BLACK office 98 page 40 txt
1250 0 engineer office ELANTRA_YELLOW office 66 page50 txt
1250 1 engineer office DATSUN_BLUE office 67 page30 text
[download]

Output:

16:14 >perl 1499_SoPW.pl
Strings:
1250 1 engineer office DATSUN_BLUE office 67 page30 text
1250 0 engineer office ELANTRA_YELLOW office 66 page50 txt
1250 1 engineer office DATSUN_BLUE office 67 page30 text

16:14 >
[download]

and the files DATSUN_BLUE.txt, TOYOTA_MAROON.txt, and ELANTRA_YELLOW.txt created and populated as required.

Updates: (1) Note also that your script splits on commas, but the data you show is separated by whitespace. I’ve changed the split statement to just my @fields = split;, which is special-cased to split the default variable, $_, on whitespace (as though the pattern were /\s+/).

(2) The braces are required around the filehandle expression in the line:

print { $cars{$fields[4]} } $fields[0], ',', $fields[4], "\n" if /engi
+neer/ && !/,-,/;
#     ^                   ^
[download]

because “whenever you’re using any expression more complex than a bareword handle or a plain, unsubscripted scalar variable ... you will have to use a block returning the filehandle value...” (perldoc print).

Hope that helps,

Greetings Monk!! This works just incredibly fantastic! I was able to adopt the logic to other reports as well. This is my first experience with the monks -they're incredible. I have just one question, can you explain why the following works: $cars{$fields4} } $fields[0], ',', $fields4, "\n" The part I don't understand is why the need for {$cars{$fields[4]}} If I put other numbers than 4, I get compile errors. Why not just  $cars{$fields[0,4]} } This is probably a silly beginner question but I don't have much perl experience and am wondering why the "4" is necessary there.

Hello again, 2015_newbie,

A typical print statement has the following syntax:

print FILEHANDLE LIST
[download]

where LIST is a list of what things to print, and FILEHANDLE is a special value telling Perl where those things are to be printed. If FILEHANDLE is omitted, the destination defaults to the last selected filehandle — typically STDOUT, which means print to the screen. If you want your output to go to a file — as you do here — then you need to open the file for writing and associate that opened file with a filehandle variable; then you give that filehandle to print to tell it where to print to.

Now, let’s return to the line:

print { $cars{$fields[4]} } $fields[0], ',', $fields[4], "\n"
    if /engineer/ && !/,-,/;
[download]

It might make things clearer if we add a couple of variables within the if clause:

if (($fields[1] eq '1'  ||
     $fields[1] eq '0') &&
     /$pattern/)
{
    push @strings, $_;

    my $number = $fields[0];
    my $model  = $fields[4];

    print { $cars{$model} } $number, ',', $model, "\n"
        if /engineer/ && !/,-,/;
}
[download]

Now it’s easier to see: in the LIST, the variable $model is what gets printed (second); but in the expression which denotes the filehandle, $model is the key corresponding to the filehandle stored in the hash %cars. So the value of $model (i.e., $fields[4]) might be DATSUN_BLUE (a string), but the corresponding hash entry, $cars{$model} (i.e., $cars{$fields[4]}), will be a special value — one which Perl understands — which identifies the file “tmp/DATSUN_BLUE.txt” as the file for print to write to.

It might help you to study perldata to get a good grasp of arrays and hashes.

Update: Corrected typo and improved wording.

Hope that helps,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum

Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,