Hmmm... I'll have to go back and have a play with what you've suggested above. Before I noticed you'd come back again, I went off and had a play as promised, and came up with the following change to deal with the Order/Title issue :

    if (/Distribution--/) {
        # Check to see if the Order/Title combo has been seen before
        if ($seen{$$hashReference{orderID},$$hashReference{title}}) {
            # Visual prompt for debugging
            print "Bollox\n";
            next RECORD;
        } # End if
        else {
            # Add the "unseen" Order/Title combo to the hash
            $seen{$$hashReference{orderID},$$hashReference{title}}++;
            #Write the Order "header" info to the spreadsheet
            $worksheet->write($row,0,$$hashReference{fiscalCycle});
            $worksheet->write($row,1,$$hashReference{vendorID});
            $worksheet->write($row,2,$$hashReference{orderID});
            $worksheet->write($row,3,$$hashReference{requisitionNum});
            $worksheet->write($row,4,$$hashReference{title});
            $worksheet->write($row,5,$$hashReference{'ISBN/ISSN'});
            $worksheet->write($row,6,$$hashReference{copies});

[download]

And it SEEMS to be working ok so far - but that's only with a small subset of the data. About to branch out and run it on a larger subset and see how it goes with regard to both results and performance... or at least I will do once I fix the server I need to get the data from, which appears to have halted a couple of core services needed for me to get to it... never a dull moment ;)

As you can see I've not gotten a chance as yet to re-visit how/when I am doing the writing to Excel, but I'll do that once I've confirmed the functionality of the script as a whole, and once I've had a bit of a play with your suggestions also.

Thanks once again for the help... it's been VERY valuable and very much appreciated. I'm sure I could have done it without you... eventually... but to be frank - I don't have enough hair left to be able to spare what it would have cost me ;)

In reply to Re^14: How best to strip text from a file? by bobdabuilda
in thread How best to strip text from a file? by bobdabuilda

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