I've just inherited as system where the prog language of choice is Perl. Unfortunately I have little Perl experience but am picking it up fast.

I have a problem which I'm a bit stumped on. Your help would be most appreciated
I have two files (this is a *nix platform) 

file1
------

rabbit 1
hen    0
pig    2
cow    2
sheep  5

file2
-----

rabbit feed 10kg used on 21/10/2005 by consumer1
cow feed 100kg used on 11/11/2005 by consumer1
sheep feed 50kg used on 24/11/2005 by consumer3

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I need to be able to update file1 and increment the number in it by 1 if the corresponding animal exists in file2
e.g. rabbit in file1 needs to be incremented to the value 2 because it appears in file2
How do I go about doing this in Perl ?
And yes this is a real agricultural application !

In reply to update values in one file from another by Anonymous Monk

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