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Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;

++! The power of aliases, but it never occured to me do that, just changed Triple syntax getopt to use it, Thanks!

--
perl -pe "s/\b;([st])/'\1/mg"

1. I would use values instead of referencing keys repeatedly. I have no idea if this is any faster. Anyone?
   (Update: Well, if japhy agrees, that's good enough for me...)
2. I would do the date test before looping through the Messages.
3. I'd use grep instead of what you have, but probably for no good reason. If it's appropriate, looping through Messages can be further improved by making it break out early when a match is found...

open(RPT,">$DIR/$RPT")||die"Can't open $RPT: $!\n";
print RPT "Report Date: $month/$day/$year\n";
print RPT "$RPT\n";
print RPT "============================\n";
foreach my $value (values %hash) {
   next unless $value->{date} =~ $DATE;
   next unless grep { $value->{error_message} =~ /$_/ } @Messages;
   print RPT ... 
   ...
}
close RPT;
[download]

buckaduck

Well, this won't necessarily make it faster, but it'll be a lot easier to read. Create a reference to $hash{$key} and use that instead: (note, untested)

my ($key, $msg, $ref);   # stick with the naming convention ;-)
foreach $key (keys %hash) {
    $ref = \$hash{$key};
    foreach $msg (@Messages) {
        if ($ref->{error_message} =~ /$msg/ and
            $ref->{date} =~ $DATE) {
           #
           # Notice one print call will suffice,
           # just line up what you want to print,
           # or concatenate into a single string.
           #
           print RPT "$ref->{packet_id}\t$ref->{origin}\n",
                     "$ref->{date}\t$ref->{qualifier}\n",
# etc.
[download]

HTH

 open(RPT,">$DIR/$RPT")||die"Can't open $RPT: $!\n";
 print RPT "Report Date: $Date\n";
 print RPT "$RPT\n";
 print RPT "============================\n";
 my($key,$msg,$ref);
 foreach $key(keys %hash){
   $ref=$hash{$key};
   foreach $msg(@Messages){
     if($ref->{error_message}=~$msg and $ref->{date} eq $Date){
       print RPT "$ref->{packet_id}\t$ref->{origin}\n",
                 "$ref->{date}\t$ref->{qualifier}\n",
                 "$ref->{time}\t$ref->{terminal_id}\n",
                 "$ref->{device_id}\t\t$ref->{application_id}\n",
                 "$ref->{catalog_code}\t\t$ref->{function_id}\n",
                 "$ref->{status}\t\t$ref->{severity}\n",
                 "$ref->{error_message}\n",
                 "====================================================
+\n";
     }## END OF IF STATEMENT
   }## END OF INNER FOREACH STATEMENT
 }## END OF OUTER FOREACH STATEMENT
 close RPT;
[download]

To repeat one of my earlier suggestions:

Why on Earth are you testing $ref->{date} eq $Date inside of the inner foreach loop? If they're not equal, skip the inner foreach loop altogether!

Admittedly, this was probably more important back when you were using a regex match instead of eq. But it could still make a big difference...

Update: And while I'm at it, these lines:

  foreach $key (keys %hash) {
    $ref = $hash{$key};
[download]

Can be replaced with this:

  foreach $ref (values %hash) {
[download]

buckaduck