hi monks,
I have a file with data like this:

id_1 info1
id_2 info2
id_3 info3

id_1 info1
id_2 info2
id_3 info3
and all I want to do is use a hash to put this into arrays eg: id_1 all the info with this id here...
so id is my key.
Here's the code:

while (<MYFILE>)
{
       {        
                
        next if /^\s*CLUSTAL/;      #remove line starting with CLUSTAL
+ heading
        next if /:/;        #skip the consensus lines which contain : 
+and *
        next if /\*/;    
        next if /^ /;
       

        my($id, $seq) = split;                   #splits each line to 
+id and sequence
        $newid = substr ($id, 0, 9);
       
                                    #remove all but 9 characters from 
+id
                                #so the id's are all the same length
        
        push @{$species{$newid}}, $seq;               #each time adds 
+sequence to   
                                  #a unique id and puts sequence in an
+ array (hash is %species)
    }   
                                


}
while (($key, $sequence)=each %species)
    {
    
        
        print DATA ">", $key, " ", join " ", @$sequence;    #\t to sep
+arate with tab
        print DATA "\n";
        
    }

close(MYFILE);
close(DATA);
[download]

the problem is, I seem to get a blank record printed out at
the top of the page - I am adding the symbol > to the front of each id

what I get in my DATA file is

>
>id1 info
>id2 info

any idea why I get this blank record printed first?
thanks