Hi Monkees

I have a large input file. Every time a line starts with a "1", I want to handle the preceding lines up to the preceding "1" (a "1" indicates the start of a different subject's data).

Because of the file-sizes involved, as well as other unavoidable memory requirements, I'm writing out the subject's data to a temporary file (rather than trying to hold all the lines in memory).

All okay - except my handling of new records is, IMHO, clumsy, and leads to an extra call to the subroutine, "output_data" at the end of the process (to handle the final record).

Here is the simplified code:

$counter = 1;
open(DATA, "export.dat")||die "Cannot open export.dat for read:$!\n";
while(<DATA>){

  $temp_line = $_;

  if($temp_line =~ /^1(\d*)/){
    if($counter > 1 ){ #No temp file yet if this is the first record
      close TEMP||die "Cannot close temp.dat:$!\n";
         &output_data();
    }
    open(TEMP, ">$temp.dat")||die "Can't open temp.dat:$!\n";
    print TEMP $temp_line;
      $counter ++;
  }
  elsif(/\S+/){
    print TEMP $temp_line;
  }
}
close DATA||die "Cannot close $in_dir/export.dat (weird):$!\n";
close TEMP||die "Cannot close $in_dir/temp.dat:$!\n";
&output_data();

sub output_data{
  #do stuff with temp.dat
}
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Can anyone suggest a more elegant way to handle this kind of thing?

Oh, and BTW, I've just noticed that I call my filehandle "DATA" - does this create any potential problems? Hmm, could be confusing to whoever maintains the code if they know about __DATA__ - better change it I guess....

map{$a=1-$_/10;map{$d=$a;$e=$b=$_/20-2;map{($d,$e)=(2*$d*$e+$a,$e**2
-$d**2+$b);$c=$d**2+$e**2>4?$d=8:_}1..50;print$c}0..59;print$/}0..20
[download]