Hello monks,

First off. I searched the archives here. What i found did not really compute (in my head at least), or was too far removed from what i need to accomplish.

Here is the surrounding criteria. My goal is to take several values from a file, line by line. The items in these lines have an important relation to one another that needs to be kept intact. I then need to compare some of these elements and compare them to elements from another file. If some the values on a given line match (MAC address in my case), i need to splice the lines from both files together. The match between the two files is the scalar "$mac".

From what i read so far I should be using a hash reference for this. My problem: I am not a programmer and i am not sure how to use hashes correctly. I cannot seem to push the scalars into the hash. 

my $ERRORCOUNT=0;
my %HASH;
my %OTHERHASH;
...
foreach my $LINE (@LINES)
{
   # the sub-routine works and is returning the desired output
   my ($vlan, $mac, $int, $counter) = linesifter($LINE);

   if ($error eq 1)
   {
      ERRORCOUNT++;
   } 
   else
   {
      my @VLANS, @MACS, @INTS);
      push $HASH{$MACS[$mac]}, [$VLANS[$vlan], [$INTS[$int]];
}

# here will follow similar code from another file 

# compare $HASH[$MACS[keymatch]] to $OTHERHASH[$MACS[$keymatch]] 
# then do *magic* and line up all items that are referenced by matchin
+g MAC key in both files onto one line. Store in a file. 

sub linesifter
{
#...
#...omitted
  # various regex'es for grep'ing data
#...
return ($vlan, $mac, $int, $error);
}

[download]

I am sure i got the hash declarations wrong. Any input on how i can compare to hashes or arrays or lines within each to one another and interpolate the data is very welcomed. Thank you as always. 

#!/usr/bin/perl 
#
#
use strict;
use warnings;

use File::Glob ':globally';

my @SHOW_ARP = <~/Documents/show_outputs/*arp*.txt>;
my @SHOW_MAC = <~/Documents/show_outputs/*mac*.txt>;
#my $CLEAN_ARP_REC = '~/Documents/clean_arp.tmp';
#my $CLEAN_MAC_REC = '~/Documents/clean_mac.tmp';

my $CLEAN_ARP_REC = '/home/gtreptow/Documents/show_outputs/clean_arp.t
+mp';
open (OUTPUT, "> $CLEAN_ARP_REC") or die "Could not open $CLEAN_ARP_RE
+C."; 

# my global hash that should contain all my matches

#my %ARP_HASH = ();    
my %MAC_HASH;
my (@VLANS, @MACS, @INTS);

foreach my $FILES (@SHOW_MAC)
{
    open (INFILE, '<', $FILES);
    print "using file: $FILES\n";
    my $FAILCOUNTER = 0;
    my $COUNTER = 0;

    chomp (my @LINES = <INFILE>);
    
    foreach my $LINE (@LINES)
    {
        my ($VLAN, $MAC, $INT, $COUNTER) = &mac_linesifter($LINE);    
+    # Call sub-routine "linesifter" and pass every line to it
        if ($COUNTER eq 1) 
        {
            $FAILCOUNTER++;
            #print "Saw an INCOMPLETE\n";                # Test each l
+ine
        }
        else        
        {    
            #print "$VLAN \t $MAC \t $INT \t $COUNTER \n";
            
            #$MAC_HASH = {};
            #$MAC_HASH->{MAC}= "$MAC";
            #$MAC_HASH->{VLAN}="$VLAN";
            #$MAC_HASH->{INT}="$INT"; 
            my ($VLANS, @MACS, @INTS);
            push @{ $MAC_HASH{$MACS[$MAC]} }, [$VLANS[$VLAN] ,$INTS[$I
+NT]];
        }
    }

# we also need to get the hostname

print "!!! $FAILCOUNTER ARP records ignored due to incomplete entries 
+!!!\n";
print "\n";
print "Contents of Hash ARP_HASH:\n";
foreach my $VALUE (sort keys %MAC_HASH)
{
    print "$VALUE, $ARP_HASH{$VALUE}[0],$ARP_HASH{$VALUE}[1],$ARP_HASH
+{$VALUE}[2]\n";
}

}
close (OUTPUT);

### BEGIN SUB-ROUTINE 2 ###

sub mac_linesifter
{
    my ($LINE) = @_;
    my $VLAN;
    my $MAC;
    my $INT;
    my $COUNTER = 0;
    
    if ($LINE !~ m/^\*/)                              # skip if line d
+oes not start with "*"
    {    
        $COUNTER=1;
        no warnings "exiting";
        next;
    }
    if ($LINE =~ m/^\s*$/)                            # skip empty lin
+es
    {
        $COUNTER=1;
        no warnings "exiting";
        next;
    }
    if ($LINE =~ m/static/)                        # skip static entri
+es
    {
        $COUNTER=1;
        no warnings "exiting";
        next;
    }
    if ($LINE =~ m/(^\*\ [0-9]*)/)                        # match VLAN
+ identifier 
    {
        # remove leading "* "
        $VLAN = substr($1,2);
    }
    if ($LINE =~ m/([0-9a-f]{4}\.[0-9a-f]{4}\.[0-9a-f]{4})/)          
+  # match MAC
    {
        $MAC = $1;
    }
    # match either - example Eth101/0/48", Eth12/1, Po12 - add regex h
+ere for additional interace type matches
    if ($LINE =~ m/([A-Z]{1}[a-z]{2}[0-9]*\/[0-9]*\/[0-9]*|[A-Z]{1}[a-
+z]{2}[0-9]*|[Po]{2}[0-9]{2})/)
    {
        $INT = $1;
        #print "int match: $1\n";
    }
    return ($VLAN, $MAC, $INT, $COUNTER);                    # return 
+these values from sub-routine
}

### END SUB-ROUTINE 2 ###

[download]

In reply to Merging hashes at key match by GeorgMN

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.