Most likely your basic problem is if ( $stamp < $t ) { which finds the oldest login time for each user.

A somewhat cleaned up test version of your code that doesn't require external files is offered below:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $search='\bconnected, address\b' ;
my @users = qw(name1 name2);
my %R;

print "search: @users\n";

while (<DATA>) {
    next unless /$search/o;
    s/L /:/;
    s/<.*>//;
    s/$search//o;
    s/ - /-/;

    my ($time, $name, $addy) = split;
    my $cleanName = name_match ($name);
    next unless $cleanName;

    my $nTime = fix_time ($time);
    my $rec = "$nTime $time $name";

    if (! exists $R{$cleanName}) {
        $R{$cleanName} = $rec;
        next;
    }

    my ($t) = $R{$cleanName} =~ /^(\d+)/;
    $R{$cleanName} = $rec if $nTime > $t;
}

print "--------------------------\n";
my @values = sort values %R;
foreach my $v (@values) {
    print STDOUT (split /:/, $v, 2)[1];
    print "\n";
}

# compare names, log names may have attributes; like
sub name_match {
    my $cleanName = shift;
    $cleanName =~ tr/"//d;

    foreach my $user (@users) {
        return $user if $cleanName =~ /$user/;
    }

    return "";
}

# convert time from  'L: MM/DD/YYYY - hh:mm:ss' to YYYYMMDDhhmmss
# which makes time comparison a doddle
sub fix_time {
        local $_ = shift;
        s/.//;
        tr/://d;
        my($date, $time) = split /-/;
        my ($m, $d, $y) = split "/", $date;

        return "$y$m$d$time";
}

__DATA__
L 03/30/2006 - 11:59:17: "name1" connected, address "192.168.1.1:27005
+"
L 03/30/2006 - 11:59:18: "name3" connected, address "192.168.1.1:27005
+"
L 03/30/2006 - 12:29:17: "name2" connected, address "192.168.1.1:27005
+"
L 03/30/2006 - 12:30:17: "name1" connected, address "192.168.1.1:27005
+"
L 03/30/2006 - 12:45:17: "name4" connected, address "192.168.1.1:27005
+"

[download]

Prints:

search: name1 name2
--------------------------
03/30/2006-12:29:17: "name2"
03/30/2006-12:30:17: "name1"

[download]
DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

In reply to Re: A pretty simple perl script.. by GrandFather
in thread A pretty simple perl script.. by xnd

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