Your code looks more like "c" than perl. Nevertheless, with only minor changes, it could be made to work if the fields in your files consist of single characters separated by single spaces. I am not going to suggest such a solution because you would miss the opportunity to learn how to use character strings and arrays-of-arrays in perl. Perl's handling of character strings is probably its greatest advantage over other languages. For small data files, I would recommend reading each file into an array of records. Each record would be formed by splitting a line into an array of fields (much as you do already) and storing a reference to that array. You could then use nested loops to compare the arrays. The biggest advantage over your existing code is that you would be comparing strings (There is no need to split them into characters). Learn to use perl's built-in documentation. Refer to perldata for information on strings and perldsc (and it references) for information on arrays-of-arrays.
Bill

In reply to Re: Compare three columns of one file with three columns of another file in perl by BillKSmith
in thread Compare three columns of one file with three columns of another file in perl by anonym

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.