I think it is breaking because you are printing every time you read in three lines, not every time you get three lines that you actually parse.

In the first three lines, you only parse the first one. At that point your array contains three pieces of information, ( ["llp", 1], ["Up", 5], [0, 6] ), the first time you print. It sorts them properly; you just don't have all the data yet. I suspect you are missing an else { next } in that block of elsifs.

That said, I feel compelled to tell you that your code is horrid. If I knew how to say it nicely, I would. If I was expected to maintain that, I would not hesitate to write it over again from scratch, all the while cursing your name. Frankly, I don't even know where to tell you to begin improving it. I think you should just scrap what you have and rethink your approach. You are almost certainly better off just parsing all of the data into a single data structure and then producing your report afterwards.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

I agree it is horrible. But can you be so kind as to enlighten me on a better way of doing it.

I think a HoH would make this problem a lot easier on the eye, so I offer a little example code, which does not print stuff out in the order you want, but hopefully gets you off in a slightly better direction:

#!/usr/perl/bin

use strict;

my %printer_hash;
my $current_printer;


while(<DATA>)
{
  if  (/^printer/) {
    my ($idle, $enabled);
    ($current_printer,$idle,$enabled) = (split)[1,3,4];
    $printer_hash{$current_printer}{IDLE_STATUS} = $idle eq "idle"?0:1
+;
    $printer_hash{$current_printer}{ENABLED}     = $enabled eq "enable
+d"?"UP":"DOWN";
  }
  elsif ( /Interface:(.+)/i ) {
        chomp;
        $printer_hash{$current_printer}{INTERFACE} = (split /\//, $_)[
+-1];
  }
  elsif ( /Description: (.+)/i) {
      $printer_hash{$current_printer}{INTERFACE}  = $1;
  }
  elsif ( /Connection: (.+)/i)  {
    $printer_hash{$current_printer}{CONNECTION} = $1 eq "direct"?"loca
+l":"remote";
  }
  elsif (/Banner not required/) {
    $printer_hash{$current_printer}{BANNER} = "NO";
  }
}

foreach my $printer ( keys %printer_hash ){
    foreach my $item ( keys %{$printer_hash{$printer}} ) {

        print "$printer => $item: $printer_hash{$printer}{$item}\n";
    }
}




__DATA__
printer llp is idle. disnabled since Wed Oct 23 15:54:08 GMT 2002. ava
+ilable.
    Form mounted:
    Content types: any
    Printer types: unknown
    Description: OPENprint printer llp
    Connection: direct
    Interface: /usr/lib/lp/model/standard
    On fault: write to root once
    After fault: continue
    Users allowed:
        (all)
    Forms allowed:
        (none)
    Banner not required
    Character sets:
        (none)
    Default pitch:
    Default page size:
    Default port settings: -opost

printer ps is idle. enabled since Wed Oct 23 15:54:17 GMT 2002. availa
+ble.
    Form mounted:
    Content types: postscript, simple
    Printer types: unknown
    Description: local printer
    Connection: direct
    Interface: /usr/lib/lp/model/net_lj4x
    On fault: write to root once
    After fault: continue
    Users allowed:
        (all)
    Forms allowed:
        (none)
    Banner not required
    Character sets:
        (none)
    Default pitch:
    Default page size:
    Default port settings:
[download]

Note that I have not thoroughly checked it, but by printing out the items in the HoH, you can put them in any order you would like, and have a good idea what is getting printed when instead of having to re-read your code and try to remember which part of the array you are printing in what location, etc.

-enlil

this should give you a running start. probably, you'll want to modify the %printer_info key to only include the values you want, and you'll want to display the keys in the order you want.

#!/usr/bin/perl
require 5.006;
use strict;
use warnings;
$|++;

my $infile = "t-printerstatus.input";
open( inputFH, "<", $infile )
    or die "Can't open $infile for reading: $!\n";

my $logfile = "t-printerstatus.output";
open ( logFH, ">", $logfile ) 
    or die "can't open $logfile for writing: $!\n";

my %printer_info = ();
{
    ## set the input record separator to a double-newline
    local $/ = "\n\n";
    while( my $record = <inputFH> )
    {
        ## seperate the items in the record
        ## the first item is the key to the printer_info hash
        ## an item ends with a newline not followed by 
        ##   spaces and an open parenthesis
        my( $key, @item ) = split /(?x) \n (?! \s+ \( )/, $record;

        ## remove all leading whitespace from each item
        s/^\s*// for @item;

        ## split each item on a colon, 
        ## add to the key in the printer_info hash
        for( @item )
        {
            my( $name, $value ) = split /:\s+/, $_;
            @{ $printer_info{$key} }{$name} = $value;
        }
    }
}
use Data::Dumper; $Data::Dumper::Indent = 1; 
print Dumper \%printer_info;
[download]

~Particle *accelerates*

if ($i == 3)
            {  
              for ( sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] } @array )
               {
                 print "$_->[0]|";
               }
                @array=();
                $i =0;
            }  
         else
            {
             $i++;
           }
[download]

-enlil

Thanks