• When you want something unique, use a hash with the things you want to be unique as the keys.
• When you have text that is seperated by something into fields, use split

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my %uniq = ();

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    my ($foo, $bar) = split /\*/;
    $uniq{$bar} = $foo;
}

print "$_\n" foreach (keys %uniq);

__DATA__
user1*house
user2*nothing
user3*house
user4*house
user5*other
user6*nothing
user7*main
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while(<DATA>){
    my ($item) = $1 if /user(?:\d+)\*(.*?)$/;
    next if $seen{$item};
    print $item,"\n";
    $seen{$item}++;
    }
[download]

artist

If this is a one time thing, a oneliner might suffice:

perl -F'\*' -lane '$h{$F[1]}++;}{print for keys %h' yourfile.txt
[download]

But please be aware of the security implications when using the -n switch.

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

This oneliner

perl -lne 's/.*\*//;print unless $f{$_}++' yourfile.txt

does the same but also maintains the order.

--

flounder