Friends.. I'm newbie in perl and doing this practice test which is I'm not able finish... What I'm trying.. 1. Parse tnsfile and search for only first alias name from the line (first "IF" gets me this i.e. DB1.UK, DB1.EU, DB3.UK, DB3.US, DB5.UK.US) ... this lets me connect to each database But problem is this will also connect same database (SID = ??) multiple times and I don't want to do that Is there anyway to have $hashref store only single alias with distinct SID? Code: 
if /^(([A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9]*)(\.([A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9]*))*)(\s|,|=)/
{
  (/\(CONNECT_DATA\s+=\s+\(SID\s+=\s+(\w+\d+?)(\s+)?\)/)
    {  
      $hashref->{$1}="";
    }
}

[download]
Sample file (tnsfile.txt) 
DB1.UK, DB2.UK =
  (
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCAL = TCP))
    (CONNECT_DATA = (SID = db1))
  )

DB1.EU, DB2.CH =
  (
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCAL = TCP))
    (CONNECT_DATA = (SID = db1))
  )

DB3.UK =
  (
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCAL = TCP))
    (CONNECT_DATA = (SID = db3))
  )

DB3.US =
  (
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCAL = TCP))
    (CONNECT_DATA = (SID = db3))
  )

DB5.UK.US, DB5.US =
  (
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCAL = TCP))
    (CONNECT_DATA = (SID = db5))
  )

[download]
Expected $hashref value: 
DB1.UK
DB3.UK
DB5.UK.US

[download]

In reply to Perl parsing file by homer4all

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