#!/usr/local/bin/perl5 

#I'll call this snippet exfields.pl as in  "EXtractFIELDS"

#zcat command for gzipped files 

$gzcatcmd="gunzip -c"; # I'll need this eventually

# Input parameters

$RegExp     = "";      # Default no regexp
$MatchFld   = "";      # Default no field match
$LastHdr    = "";      # Last read header line
$DbFSplit = ' ';  # Need this form for split
$DbOFSep = ' ';   # Default output field delimiter 
$VBarDel = 0;     # Flag default not splitting by vertical bar
($progname = $0) =~  s/^.*\/([^\/*]+)$/$1/;  # name of this program 

while (@ARGV) {
    $Param = shift @ARGV;
    if ($Param eq "-s") {
    $RegExp = shift @ARGV;     # Search expression
    } elsif ($Param eq "-f") {
    $MatchFld = shift @ARGV;   # Search field specifier
    } elsif ($Param eq "-e") {
    $FList = shift @ARGV;      # field extract list
   } elsif ($Param =~ /^\-/) {
    &ErrorExit; #I'll define this later; you get the point
    } else {
    push @FileList,$Param;
    }
}
# Flag to substitute for whitespace if the new field delimiter 
#includes whitespace and the old one did not. The assumption is 
#that if the old delimiter included whitespace, we do not need 
#to convert existing whitespace in fields. May be modified by 
# #DFD declaration..

if (($DbOFSep =~ /^ +$/) &&
    ($DbFSplit !~ /^ +$/)){
    $FixSpaces = 'Y';  # can't have Null fields or whitespace
} else {
    $FixSpaces = '';   # can't have Null fields or whitespace
}

@OrigFields = split(',',$FList);
unless (@FileList) {push @FileList,"-";}

    print " @FileList\n";
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</CODE
If you run this:
<CODE>
exfields.pl -e Name,Rank,SerialNumber file.gz
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Name,Rank,SerialNumber
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exfields.pl -e Name,Rank,SerialNumber file.gz | Who,What,Where another
+file.gz
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print "@FileList_1\n";   #prints "Name" "Rank" SerialNumber"
print "@FileList_2\n";   #prints "Who" "What" "Where"
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exfields.pl file1.gz Name,Rank,SerialNumber file2.gz Who,What,Where

to break this into params try this code:

if ($ARGV[3] ne "") {
    $file1 = $ARGV[0];
    @list1 = split (/,/, $ARGV[1]);
    $file2 = $ARGV[2];
    @list2 = split (/,/, $ARGV[3]);
}
else { print "Enter all required parameters"; }
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also note: there can be no spaces in the lists