Thank you for the tips so far guys, I can definitely stop feeling stuck now :-)

When posting this question I forgot it might actually help for getting the most specific advise if I'd add some snippets of the files used, so here they are

what the .xml-files look like:

  <contractor customergroup="PAR">
    <person>
      <firstname>Julie</firstname>
      <name>Keppen</name>
      <sex>F</sex>
      <birthdate></birthdate>
      <phone>0485651115</phone>
      <email>juliekeppen@gmail.com</email>
    </person>
  </contractor>

[download]

What the .txt-file looks like:

FirstName    Julie    LastName    Keppen    Email    juliekeppen@gmail
+.com    BirthDate    1987-11-11
FirstName    Amaury    LastName    Reinquin    Email    a.reinquin@out
+look.com    BirthDate    1991-08-24
FirstName    Pierre    LastName    Vaucamps    Email    pierre.vaucamp
+s@gmail.com    BirthDate    1988-11-26
FirstName    Stephanie-Katrien    LastName    Eggermont-Witpas    Emai
+l    eggermont.st@gmail.com    BirthDate    1900-01-01

[download]

I have just changed the query to output this result in a more readable way:

Julie;Keppen;juliekeppen@gmail.com;1987-11-11
Amaury;Reinquin;a.reinquin@outlook.com;1991-08-24
Pierre;Vaucamps;pierre.vaucamps@gmail.com;1988-11-26
Stephanie-Katrien;Eggermont-Witpas;eggermont.st@gmail.com;1900-01-01

[download]

My gut tells me this last version might be easier when working with hashes.

Have looked up stuff on hashes but it is not clear to me how to use them in this assignment, every time I read something on hashes, the first thing they do is store specific strings in them like this:

%HoA = (
    flintstones    => [ "fred", "barney" ],
    jetsons        => [ "george", "jane", "elroy" ],
    simpsons       => [ "homer", "marge", "bart" ],
);

[download]

This is not very helpful to me, I'm not going to manually type in all names, may aswell manually look up the bdates and copy-paste them in the .xml then. But of course, I know I'm missing something essential in the explanation given about the hashes. Just don't know what.

In reply to Re: Matching specific strings (are subs a good idea?) by zarath
in thread Matching specific strings (are subs a good idea?) by zarath

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