Please post code that compiles cleanly and looks a little better than that, then we can check it out.

--t. alex

"Mud, mud, glorious mud. Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!" --Michael Flanders and Donald Swann

Sorry, here is the code again, thanks for your replay!

my $start = $getdata;
my $end   = $getdata2;

my $dir = '../weblog/';
@ARGV     = ();

die "start must be less than end" if $start >= $end;
die "no dir $dir here" unless -d $dir;


find sub {
   my $numb = (fileparse($_,'.txt'))[0];
   return unless $numb =~ /^\d+$/;
   push @ARGV, $File::Find::name if $numb >= $start and $numb <= $end;
}, $dir;

die "no .txt files found in $dir" unless @ARGV;

while ( <> ) {
$p1="P1 = (inquiry, launch page)\n";
$p2="P2 = (car coverages, endorsements, operators)\n";
$p3="P3 = (notepad, scratch)\n";
$b1="B1 = (my inquiry: auto, home and location)";
$p0="P0 = (local search)\n";
$c0="C0 = (dist search)\n";
$c1="C1 = (state inquiry)\n";
$c3="C3 = (test notepad)\n";
$h1="H1 = (owners and coop search and history)\n";
if (m/iapw_p1/g){s/iapwp1/$p1/g; print;}
if (m/iapw_p2/g){s/iapwp2/$p2/g; print;}
if (m/iapw_p3/g){s/iapwp3/$p3/g; print;}
if (m/iapw_b1/g){s/iapwb1/$b1/g; print;}
if (m/iapw_p0/g){s/iapwp0/$p0/g; print;}
if (m/iapw_c0/g){s/iapwc0/$c0/g; print;}
if (m/iapw_c1/g){s/iapwc1/$c1/g; print;}
if (m/iapw_c2/g){s/iapwc3/$c3/g; print;}
if (m/iapw_c3/g){s/iapwh1/$h1/g; print;}
}
[download]

Just looking at the rule checking, I can recommend putting the rules into a hash:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

#  Define substitution rules using a hash. Note that these rules are 
#  stored in no particular order .. if this is very slow, efficiences 
#  can be achieved by changing to an array of hashes, with the most
#  likely rule checked first.

my %Rules =
(
  "p1" => "P1 = (inquiry, launch page)\n",
  "p2" => "P2 = (car coverages, endorsements, operators)\n",
  "p3" => "P3 = (notepad, scratch)\n",
  "b1" => "B1 = (my inquiry: auto, home and location)",
  "p0" => "P0 = (local search)\n",
  "c0" => "C0 = (dist search)\n",
  "c1" => "C1 = (state inquiry)\n",
  "c3" => "C3 = (test notepad)\n",
  "h1" => "H1 = (owners and coop search and history)\n"
);

#  Process the input stream.

while ( <> ) 
{
  foreach ( keys %Rules )
  {
    if ( m/iapw_$_/ )
    {
      s/iapw_$_/$Rules{ $_ }/ge;
      print;

      #  Is there only one possible subsitution per line? If so, 
      #  we could use a 'last' statement here to go on to the next 
      #  line.
    }
  }
}
[download]

Your logic for opening up the log files is bizarre and does not compile on my system, but I'll presume that you have that part of the operation working correctly.

I can strongly recommend 'Learning Perl' from O'Reilly books. Read through that, try as many examples as you can, and you'll be far better off to tackle Perl projects.

--t. alex

"Mud, mud, glorious mud. Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!" --Michael Flanders and Donald Swann