Maybe you should consider using a hashtable to store the information you parse out from each line of your input, e.g.:

mtab[$ii] = {
 'product' => $product,
 'date' => $date,
 'hour' => $hour,
 ...
};# I am a hash(ref) stored in an array

[download]

I am pretty sure that $mtab[$i][$j][$k][$l]=$user; is not doing what you have in mind - whatever that is. Be warned that Perl arrays are not sparse so if your $i,$j,$k,$l are some large-ish number then you have just created a 4-dimensional monster in RAM.

Perl arrays are not sparse. In other words, if you have a 10,000th element, you must have the 9,999 other elements, too. They may be undefined, but they still take up memory. For this reason, $array[time( )], or any other construct that uses a very large integer as an array index, is a really bad idea. Use a hash instead. (Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition by Nathan Torkington, Tom Christiansen)

bw, bliako

In reply to Re: Why am I getting Can't use string (<string value>) as an ARRAY ref wile "strict refs" in use by bliako
in thread Why am I getting Can't use string (<string value>) as an ARRAY ref wile "strict refs" in use by 5NOMAD7

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