hi all

I have a plain text file with a couple of hundred lines in it like so:

001 client 1
002 client 2
003 client 3
etc etc

My problem is that I need to loop through this file and print out the clients in alphabetical order - the thing is that each client must retain its order number, the reason being is that each client is a link, and pressing on this link prints out the client and its number to 2 input text boxes. Printing them out is no problem (using javascript) but I cant get perl to sort the client alphabetically while keeping the correct number.

I've written 2 subs - the first works fine as its the numbers that are printed but the second one has stumped me - I tried to use arrays, hashes etc but no joy

#this one works
sub getNumbers{
    foreach(@file){
        next if m/(^#|^$)/;
        my ($cltnbr, $cltname) = split ('   ', $_);
        print "<span class='spacer'><a href='#' title='$cltnbr' name='
+$cltname' onclick='fillText(this);'>$cltnbr</a></span>";
    }
}

[download]


#help!
sub getClients{
    foreach(@file){
        next if m/(^#|^$)/;
        my ($cltnbr, $cltname) = split ('   ', $_);
        print "<a href='#' title='$cltnbr' name='$cltname' onclick='fi
+llText(this);'>$cltname</a><br />";
    }
}

[download]


any help appreciated!

Mike

In reply to sorting a file by mooker

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