I've been tasked with a rather large software update task and have hit a road-bump at the first hurdle which is baffling me - not hard to do and I've had a very bad week! I want to compare 2 files which contain among things PC numbers. I want to compare the new list with the old and extract the names of the new PC's that have been added since the last run. Simple I hear you say, well I thought so. The following code tells me every PC is new - working for a Council I KNOW that's simply not true!

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
use strict ;
#

#
# Scalars
#---------#

my $count_in  = 0 ;
my $count_new = 0 ;

my $file_new  = 'PC_LIST_20060919.txt' ;
my $file_old  = 'Prev_carefirst_PCs.txt' ;
my $PC_NO     = undef ;

#
# Arrays
#--------#

my @fields = () ;

#
# Boolean
#---------#

my $FOUND = 0 ;

#
# Processing
#------------#

print "\n\t\t\t\tTest Starts\n" ;

open IN1, "<$file_new" or die "\n\tCanny open $file_new :: $!\n" ;

while (<IN1>) {

   chomp ;
   $count_in ++ ;
   @fields = split /,/, $_ ;
   $PC_NO  = $fields[1] ;
   $FOUND  = 0 ;

   open IN2, "<$file_old" or die "\n\tCanny open $file_old :: $!\n" ;

   while (<IN2>) {

      chomp ;

      if (/($PC_NO)/) {
         print "\n\tIt matched!!!\n" ;
         $FOUND = 1 ;
      }

   }

   close IN2 or die "\n\tCan't close $file_old :: $!\n" ;

   if (! $FOUND) {
      print "\n\tPC $PC_NO is new!" ;
      $count_new ++ ;
   }

}

close IN1 or die "\n\tCan't close $file_new :: $!\n" ;

print "\n\tThere were $count_in PC's checked!" ;
print "\n\tThere were $count_new new PC's found!" ;

print "\n\t\t\t\tTest Ends\n" ;
[download]

The files being read were a csv file saved from an Excel spreadsheet (The new list) and a txt file saved from an access table (The old list).
The NEW list looks like

Priority Kirkgate, PC7588
Priority Kirkgate, PC7598
Priority Kirkgate, PC8590
Priority.CD Site's, PC8648
Priority.CD Site's, PC8756
Priority.CD Site's, PC9020
Priority.CD Site's, PC9028
Priority.CD Site's, PC9093
[download]

The old list looks like

"B5206","128.1.36.205","000C765D5E68","CN=PC7607.OU=Workstations.O=abe
+rdeen.T=ABERDEEN"
"PC10018","128.1.37.13","0011090675AA","CN=PC10018.OU=Workstations.O=a
+berdeen.T=ABERDEEN"
"PC10152","128.1.40.30","000C76EFD05F","CN=PC10152.OU=Workstations.O=a
+berdeen.T=ABERDEEN"
"PC10171","128.1.13.57","000C76EFD027","CN=PC10171.OU=Workstations.O=a
+berdeen.T=ABERDEEN"
"PC10266","128.1.38.195","0011092581AB","CN=PC10266.OU=Workstations.O=
+aberdeen.T=ABERDEEN"
"PC10335","128.1.34.213","0011092582CE","CN=PC10335.OU=Workstations.O=
+aberdeen.T=AB
[download]

The strange thing is that I thought it was my logic that was wrong but if I create a couple of dummy new & old files with just one entry in each it works fine! Any ideas what I'm failing to understand here?

2006-10-04 Retitled by Corion, as per Monastery guidelines
Original title: 'Baffled'

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