For partial matches, an alternative approach would be to treat the text file as a database table using DBD::CSV and query with the SQL 'LIKE' operator.

#!perl
use strict;    
use DBI;

# set up database
my $dbh = DBI->connect ("dbi:CSV:", undef, undef, {
  csv_tables  => {
    customer => { 
      f_file    => "customers.txt" ,
      col_names => ['NAME','TELNO','EMAIL'],
    }
  },
  csv_sep_char => " ",
}) or die $DBI::errstr;
        
print "Type 'q' to exit\n";
my @field = ('Name','TelNo','Email');
my $i=0; my $input;
while (1) {
  do {
  # get input
    $i = 0 if $field[$i] eq '';
    print $field[$i]."? ";
    chomp($input = <STDIN>);
    ++$i;
  } until ($input) ;
  --$i;
  last if (lc $input eq 'q');
  
  # query database
  my $fld = $field[$i];
  print "Search for $fld contains '$input'\n";
  my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM customer 
                           WHERE $fld CLIKE ?"); # ignore case
  $sth->execute('%'.$input.'%');
  my $count;
  while (my @f = $sth->fetchrow_array){
    ++$count;
    print "$count $fld : $f[$i] -> $f[0] $f[1] $f[2]\n";
  }
  print "Customer record not found. \n" unless ($count);
  $input='';
}

[download]
poj

In reply to Re: The Art of Hashing by poj
in thread The Art of Hashing by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.