To everyone who replied to my post, thankyou. Particularly to George, many thanks, as it was your thoughts that enabled me to solve this one. I'm pretty chuffed with the code I did, even though for most of you this will be very basic and easy perl. Nevertheless, in case anyone can use it, here it is. Of course, if anyone wants to offer improvements on it, please feel free...

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
$file1 = "file1.txt";
$file2 = "file2.txt";
open(FILE1,"<$file1"); 
@file1 = <FILE1>;
close(FILE1);
open(FILE2,"<$file2"); 
@file2 = <FILE2>;
close(FILE2);

$matches = 0;    
foreach $line ( @file1 ) {    
    foreach $line2 ( @file2 ) {    
    @array1 = split (/\|/, $line);    
    @array2 = split (/\|/, $line2);    
    $numavail = @array1;
    $limit = $numavail - 3;    
        for ( $i=12; $i < $limit; $i++ )  {         
            if ( $array1[$i] eq $array2[$i] ) {    
            $matches++;    
                   }    
            }    
        if ( $matches >= 1 && $array1[14] ge $array2[14] && $array1[12
+] le $array2[12]) {            

print "Here is where I print the data I want to retreive, using things
+ like $array1[12] etc";
        }            
    $matches = 0;        
    }            
}
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