I need to be able to match the first field (car number) to the date in both files. Either file my have multiple listing of the date. If no date exists it still gets written out. If multiple dates I really need to match the closest dates to each other. (ex. 04/01/2013 04/05/2013 then 04/06/2013 04/30/2013) I hope this makes sense. Thanks for any help

I can't figure out how to combine my two files to get the desired output.

file 1:
AOKX 495408, L,  04/02/13, SWCOMP
AOKX 495408, L,  04/20/13, SWCOMP
BLHX    102, L,  04/01/13, WILDCOM
CRDX   7067, L,  04/05/13, TYCO
WW     9030, L,  04/02/13, HALLI

file2:
AOKX 495408, L,  04/15/13, SWCOMP
BLHX    102, L,  04/03/13, WILDCOM
BLHX    102, L,  04/30/13, WILDCOM
CRDX   7067, L,  04/20/13, TYCO
WW     9030, L,  04/30/13, HALLI

output (what it needs to look like)
$key        $le $date   $rdate       $company or $rcompany
AOKX 495408 L  04/02/13 04/15/2013 SWCOMP
AOKX 495408 L  04/20/13            SWCOMP
BLHX    102 L  04/01/13 04/03/2013 WILDCOM
BLHX    102 L           04/30/2013 WILDCOM
CRDX   7067 L  04/05/13 04/20/2013 TYCO
WW     9030 L  04/02/13 04/30/13   HALLI

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

open FILE1, "<", "out1.txt" or die "$!\n";

my %hash;

 while ( <FILE1> ) {
     chomp $_;
     my ( $key, $le, $date, $company ) = split ',', $_;
     $hash{$key} = [$le, $date, $company];
#    print "$key $date\n"; 
 }

 close FILE1;

 open FILE2, "<", "out2.txt" or die "$!\n";
 open OUTFILE, ">", "final.txt" or die "$!\n";

 while (<FILE2>) {
     my ( $rkey, $rle, $rdate, $rcompany ) = split ',', $_;
     $hash{$rkey} = [$rle, $rdate, $rcompany];
 #   print OUTFILE "\n"; #to write out once figure out how to combine

 }

 close FILE2;
 close OUTFILE;

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In reply to combining 2 files with 4 columns need help by rruser

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