Dear Monk,
Let me at the risk of being repetitive since you've already gotten advise on this subject try and make things more clear to you.

Consider the following code: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my %storage=();
# untested, but should in theory work...
my $junk=<DATA>; #get rid of header
while(my $line=<DATA>){
      chomp($line); # Get rid of newline
      my ($host,$dist_id,$status)=split(/[\s\n\t]+/,$line); # split on
+ any whitespace
      my $storage{$host) = 
                {
                  host=> $host,
                  dist_id => $dist_id,
                  status=> $status
                };  # Put this into a hash keyed on the two fields we 
+want to key on 
}

# We never removed the new line character from $junk so...
print $junk;  # We reclaim this from the trash can
foreach my $key(sort keys %storage){
    #
    # Print the remaining record matching the keys 
     printf "%s\t%s\t%s\n",$storage{$key}->{host},$storage{$key}->{dis
+t_id},$storage{$key}->{status};

}


exit(0);
__END__
COMPUTER      DISTRIBUTION_ID    STATUS    
30F-WKS     `1781183799.xxxx1'      IC---
30F-WKS     `1781183799.xxx11'      IC---
ADM34A3F9   `1781183799.41455'      IC---

[download]

The way this works is you are going to overwrite subsequent records that you read in for the same host in the hash %storage and as a result get the last record in your data set output. Since you said in CB you don't know if your fields are space or tab separated I covered both bases by using the regex /[\s\t\n]+/ in the split callout.

Hope this helps

Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional
Peter -at- Berghold -dot- Net; AOL IM redcowdawg Yahoo IM: blue_cowdawg

In reply to Re: File Manipulation - Need Advise! by blue_cowdawg
in thread File Manipulation - Need Advise! by nashkab

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