Hi All, I am a new bie for perl and perl monks.. I had gone through many posts of perl monks but could not find the answer for a problem which i m having. I have a task of merging columns of multiple files(tab seperated) based on multiple common columns. e.g.

File1.txt
ID NAME date Val1 Val2 Val3 Val4
1 ABC 04-05-2013 10 11 12 13
2 XYZ 04-05-2013 21 22 23 24
1 ABC 05-05-2013 30 31 32 33
2 XYZ 05-05-2013 41 42 43 44


File2.txt
ID NAME date Val101 Val102 Val103 Val104
1 ABC 04-05-2013 50 51 52 53


File3.txt
ID NAME date Val101 Val102 Val103 Val104
1 ABC 05-05-2013 60 61 62 63
2 XYZ 05-05-2013 71 72 73 74


All these files should merge as below
result.txt
ID NAME date Val1 Val2 Val3 Val4 Val101 Val102 Val103 Val104
1 ABC 04-05-2013 10 11 12 13 50 51 52 53
2 XYZ 04-05-2013 21 22 23 24 "--" "--" "--" "--"
1 ABC 05-05-2013 30 31 32 33 60 61 62 63
2 XYZ 05-05-2013 41 42 43 44 71 72 73 74

The Data Files cand have rows in few thousands

In reply to Merge Columns of Multiple files based on Multiple Common Column by deepak2027

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