Currently we receive 3 files monthly and I have a script which outputs the date in yyyy,mm,dd format. My need is to create a file containing the record with the longest time spread, as you can see there can be multiple dates or only 1 date. my output files are in the following format: 

file1:
COMPANY      ABCD 764200 E  2013,12,13   2013,12,19
COMPANY      BCDX 156167 L  2013,11,29   2013,12,03
COMPANY      BCYX 165230 L  2013,12,13   2013,12,19

file2:
COMPANY      ABCD 764200 E  2013,12,13   2013,12,19
COMPANY      BCDX 156167 L  2013,12,28   2013,12,31

file3:
COMPANY      ABCD 764200 E  2013,12,13   2013,12,17
COMPANY      BCDX 156167 L  2013,11,30   2013,12,03
COMPANY      BCYX 165230 L  2013,12,13   2013,12,17
COMPANY      BCYX 156095 L  2013,11,30   2013,12,08

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What I have so far:

Have extraction script append all 3 files to 1 file

Check for identical entries with script checking for duplicates

Script in progress that gets the difference between the 2 dates and skips any difference less that 5 (4 days and under are free days)

I just don't know how to code for extracting the record with the longest time spread discarding any others.

Here is the script I am working on (your input and suggestions are much appreciated...thanks) 

#!/usr/bin/perl
# 
use strict;
use warnings;
use Date::Calc qw( Delta_Days );

my @entries=();   ## hold my entries

open (my $file, '<', (@ARGV)) or die $!;
while (<$file>) {
    my @flds = split '\s+', $_;
    s/\s+$//;
    
    ## load my entries
    my $entry;
        
        $entry->{COMPANY} =    $flds[0];
        $entry->{CAR_PART_1} = $flds[1];
        $entry->{CAR_PART_2} = $flds[2];
        $entry->{LE} =         $flds[3];
        $entry->{BEG_DATE} =   $flds[4];
        $entry->{END_DATE} =   $flds[5];

    ##  Push $entry onto @entries
        push (@entries, $entry);
}        
close $file;
               
        foreach my $ent (sort @entries) {
            my @ymd1 = split ',',$ent->{BEG_DATE};
            my @ymd2 = split ',',$ent->{END_DATE};
            my $diff = Delta_Days(@ymd1, @ymd2);
            if ($diff < 5) { next; }
            else {
                ## this is where I need logic for grabbing only the re
+cord with the most days
            printf "$ent->{CAR_PART_1} $ent->{CAR_PART_2} $ent->{LE} $
+ent->{BEG_DATE} $ent->{END_DATE} $diff\n";   ## testing output
        }
}
exit;

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In reply to Working with multiple records with different dates by rruser

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