So what you have is two tables and you want to combine the data. This is the sort of task that a relational database excels at. If you were to store your data in one you could then use SQL to pull the values out in any format you want using syntax like this: 

my $sql = 'SELECT student_id, grade, instructor 
           FROM student_info_table 
           WHERE class = ? 
           ORDER BY student_id';

my $sth = $dbh->prepare_cached($sql);
$sth->execute('BUS4000');

while ( @row = $sth->fetchrow_array ) {
    my ( $id, $grade, $instructor ) = @row;
    # blah
}

[download]

This lets you pull whatever you like out of a single table but the true power comes when you JOIN tables together so that you can pull results out of several tables at once. As you can see databases have inbuilt ORDER BY (sort) functionality as well. You will not regret it in the long run. Converting from your flat files to a database table can be done in around a dozen lines of perl.

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

In reply to Re: Complex Soring/Reporting by tachyon
in thread Complex Sorting/Reporting by data67

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