I have 2 tab delimited flattext files. One contains all the major info that I want to search from, the other the info that I want to sort by. They have a common ID column though not identical) so it would seem to be quite straightforward to do this.

In the following code I have put the main db into an array, and the sorting db into a hash. the idea is that on iterating through the array I check to see if the ID exists in the hash and if so put it into the sort field. If it doesn't exist sort field is undefined.

The problem is: it doesn't work!! If anyone could help me achieve this that'd be really great.

Thanks. 
my %sort_file;
open (FILE, "$data") or die $!;
@all=<FILE>;
close (FILE);

my $points_total= "/path/points_total.txt";   


open FH, "$points_total" or die "Can't open $points_total: $!";
flock (FH, 1) or die "Can't lock $points_total for reading: $!";
my @fh=<FH>;
close FH;

#create hash of sort file
foreach (@fh) {
    chomp;
    ($checkIDNumber, $total_points) = split "\t",$_;
    $sort_file{$checkIDNumber} = $total_points;
}    

foreach $line (@all){
$line=~s/\n//g;

($undef,$undef,$IDNumber,$Email_address,$Page_Name)=split (/\t/,$line)
+;

    if (exists ($sort_file{$IDNumber} )) {
        $sortfield = $total_points;
    }     else {
        $sortfield = "";
    }    
}

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In reply to sorting an array from two sources by Anonymous Monk

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