Hoping not to get flogged here, but I wanted to post the question tonight so maybe I would have a starting point when I come back in tomorrow.
I'm an absolute newb when it comes to programming, but I think PERL will be good for what I'm trying to do...and I have the books, so I'm hoping to fumble through this.

I'm trying to load in data from two files. One file has the category ID for each item I am interested in. (eg. item.1.ext = square, item.2.ext = circle, etc.)
The second file contains all the attributes for these items. Each attribute has a binary yes/no represented by 1 or 0. My files can have a couple hundred items, with a million attributes for each item.

What I am looking to do is find a good way to process through the attributes by category and score them. I was thinking that I would read in the files and attempt to create a count for each group. And then use the number of times the attribute was present in a category set over the number of items in that category to create a series of scoring criteria.(Like which attributes occur in each category more than 75% of the time, but less than 25% of the time in any other category. Basically looking for category unique attributes.)

But as I've learned with PERL, there are 7000 different ways to skin a cat, so I'm up for any suggestions. I'm trying to make this a fairly quick process because it will be repeated OFTEN.(Datasets will be ~200 items, 4-10 categories, and 1 million attributes.)

data example in readmore.

#ID's File ID 1.file.ext Square 2.file.ext Triangle 3.file.ext Circle 4.file.ext Square 5.file.ext Triangle 6.file.ext Circle 7.file.ext Circle 8.file.ext Rectangle 9.file.ext Rectangle 10.file.ext Circle 11.file.ext Triangle 12.file.ext Triangle 13.file.ext Square 14.file.ext Rectangle 15.file.ext Rectangle 16.file.et Square #Attributes attribute 1.file.ext 2.file.ext 3.file.ext 4.file.ext 5 +.file.ext 6.file.ext 7.file.ext 8.file.ext 9.file.ext +10.file.ext 11.file.ext 12.file.ext 13.file.ext 14.file.e +xt 15.file.ext 16.file.et 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 +1 1 1 2 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 +0 0 1 3 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 +1 1 0 4 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 +1 1 0 5 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 +0 0 0 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 +1 1 0 7 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 +1 1 0 8 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 +1 1 1 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 +1 1 0 10 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 + 0 0 0 11 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 + 1 1 0 12 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 + 0 0 1 13 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 + 0 0 0 14 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 + 1 1 0 15 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 + 0 0 0 16 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 + 0 0 1 17 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 + 0 0 1 18 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 + 0 0 0 19 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 + 1 1 1 20 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 + 1 1 0 21 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 + 1 1 0 22 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 + 1 1 1 23 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 + 1 1 1 24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 + 0 0 0 25 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 + 0 0 0 26 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 + 0 0 1 27 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 + 0 0 0 28 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 + 1 1 1 29 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 + 1 1 0 30 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 + 1 1 1

In reply to Best way to store/access large dataset? by Speed_Freak

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