Hi Monks, I have a question regarding the use of a hash. The goal of the following script is to loop through a file that looks like this: 

 
20131201.06372602.mcp
APRL 7.1963
BEBP 7.1979
CASY 7.3879
DONT 7.3196
DUBY 6.3729
FOOT 7.1496
GRAW 7.0046
KNYN 6.7313
LEON 7.4596
MICH 7.5579
RAPH 7.0563
RKST 6.6879
SAMH 6.9529
SHRD 6.2829
SPLN 6.1113
20131202.02185602.mcp
APRL -2.1870
BEBP -2.3270
CASY -1.0153
DONT -0.1453
DUBY -1.9920
FOOT -2.1903
GRAW -1.5937
KNYN -2.0403
LEON -0.6237
MICH -1.5737
RAPH -1.3287
RKST -2.5337
SAMH -1.9653
SHRD -2.4087
SPLN -2.2053

[download]

Which is repeated >100 times. I am using a hash, because I first want to assign each string (DONT, MICH, etc) a number, which I have done so here in this hash: 

my %station_name = (
DONT => "1",
MICH => "2",
LEON => "3",
RAPH => "4",
SPLN => "5",
SHRD => "6",
CASY => "7",
APRL => "8",
FOOT => "9",
BEBP => "10",
RKST => "11",
DUBY => "12",
SAMH => "13",
GRAW => "14",
KNYN => "15",
KP01 => "16",
KP02 => "17",
KP03 => "18",
KP04 => "19",
KP05 => "20",
);

[download]

What I want to do is loop through the above file (which is the format above), and for each station (DONT, MICH, etc), print out the respective number (time). However, I am unsure how to do this in an if-statement. What I have is below: 

 for ($i = 0; $i < @rat_event; $i++) {
    chomp($rat_event[$i]);
    ($station, $delaytime) = (split /\s+/, $rat_event[$i])[0,1];
    # create a Hash for the Stations.
    if ($station = %station_name) {
        #I don't know what do do here.
}

close(rat_event);
close(RAT_STA);

[download]
where rat_event is the file I'm looping through, $station and $delaytime are the values from above, but when it comes to the 'if' statement, I'm unsure how to use the hash to output something like: 
1
time1
time2
...
time_n
2
time1
time2
...
time_n.

[download]
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

In reply to Using a Hash Variable in an If Statement by Bama_Perl

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