Ok, I have a list of about 250 'profiles', all in a single plain text file. They appear in this format:

FIlE:  Users.txt------------------------------
jblow::1337:21::::Joe Blow:/Network/Servers/schoolserv.domain/Volumes/
+UserFiles/Users/jblow::/bin/bash::<home_dir><url>afp\://same.ip.here/
+User%20Files</url><path>jblow</path></home_dir>:<?xml version="1.0" e
+ncoding="UTF-8"?>\
<dict>\
    <key>kAPOPRequired</key>\
    <string>APOPNotRequired</string>\
    <key>kAltMailStoreLoc</key>\
    <string></string>\
    <key>kAttributeVersion</key>\
    <string>Apple Mail 1.0</string>\
    <key>kAutoForwardValue</key>\
    <string></string>\
    <key>kIMAPLoginState</key>\
    <string>IMAPAllowed</string>\
    <key>kMailAccountLocation</key>\
    <string>142.176.189.139</string>\
    <key>kMailAccountState</key>\
    <string>Enabled</string>\
    <key>kPOP3LoginState</key>\
    <string>POP3Allowed</string>\
    <key>kUserDiskQuota</key>\
    <string>0</string>\
</dict>\
::<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>\
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http\:/
+/www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">\
<plist version="1.0">\
<dict>\
    <key>simultaneous_login_enabled</key>\
    <true/>\
</dict>\
</plist>\
--------------------EOF-Section-----------------------

[download]

This is the exact same for every user, except the very first line:

jblow::1337:21::::Joe Blow:/Network/Servers/schoolserv.domain/Volumes/
+UserFiles/Users/jblow::/bin/bash::<home_dir><url>afp\://same.ip.here/
+User%20Files</url><path>jblow</path></home_dir>:<?xml version="1.0" e
+ncoding="UTF-8"?>\

[download]
which of course changes for each user.

What I need to create, is a function that opens the file, and sets each line to a part of an array (yes, it will be a huge arary). It will then only search for the lines containing the unique user data, and not bother with the rest. Then, it will extract

shortname (jblow)
and
long name (Joe Blow)
and it will create a hash (say %finishedusers), with shortname->longname (or longname->shortname, it really doenst matter)

Any ideas? I have written some code for it, but I'm really not sure how to proceed:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;
@numarray= open (NUMLONG, "<$oldfile") or die "Error opening $oldfile 
+: $!";
@shortarray = open (SHORTLONG, "<$newfile") or die "Error opening $new
+file : $!";

sub sessionclean {
    my $x = 0
    foreach $key (@shortarray)
        if ($key =~ /\:{2}\d+\:{4}/) {
        
        } else {
            # ignore
        }
    }
}

[download]


(You can ignore the reference to oldfile, thats for another part of the script.

In reply to Pattern Matching Question by gsr

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