comment on

First of all, this looks like it's going to be a problem:

while (<RESULT>){
    @my_data=<RESULT>;
    print "@my_data\n"
}
[download]

What you probably want is just:

@my_data = <RESULT>;
[download]

otherwise you will be discarding the first line of the RESULT file. If you really want to discard the first line of the RESULT file, I would use perhaps:

<RESULT>; # reads a line from RESULT
@my_data = <RESULT>; # reads rest into @my_data
[download]

Secondly, I wouldn't use my @cells = split /\"/, $_; to parse the DATA file. It looks like the data is either tab or whitespace delimited with some fields being enclosed in double quotes. I would see if Text::CSV can parse the data since it already has support for de-quoting fields. Otherwise, if no whitespace occurs within double quotes, something like this may work:

while (<DATA>) {
  chomp;
  my @cells = split(' ', $_);
  for (@cells) { s/^"(.*)"$/$1/ }
  ...
}
[download]

Finally, the general approach I would use to combine the files is to read one of the files into hash - the key of the hash will the field or combination of fields that are common to both files. Then when you process the other file, you can look up the corresponding data in the hash based on the values you parsed for the common fields.

I can't figure out exactly which fields you need to join on, so here's a contrived example which demonstrates the approach:

Let's suppose you have two files containing the following data:

File A:
ALABAMA                         AL
ALASKA                          AK
ARIZONA                         AZ
ARKANSAS                        AR
CALIFORNIA                      CA
COLORADO                        CO
...

File B:
Alabama     Montgomery
Alaska          Juneau
Arizona     Phoenix
Arkansas     Little Rock
California     Sacramento
Colorado     Denver
Connecticut     Hartford
Delaware     Dover
Florida     Tallahassee
Georgia     Atlanta
...
[download]

And you want to combine the two files based on the field they have in common (the name of the state.) You first read in one of the files into a hash:

my %data;
open(A, '<', 'fileA');
while (<A>) {
  chomp;
  my @cells = split(' ', $_);
  $data{lc($cells[0])} = [ @cells ];
}
close(A);
[download]

Then you process the second file:

open(B, '<', 'fileB');
while (<B>) {
  chomp;
  my @cells = split(' ', $_);
  # $cells[0] is the state name, $cells[1] is the capital
  my $data_from_a = $data{lc($cells[0]} || [];
  print join("\t", @cells, @$data_from_a), "\n";
}
[download]

This results in something like:

Alabama Montgomery      ALABAMA AL
Alaska  Juneau  ALASKA  AK
Arizona Phoenix ARIZONA AZ
Arkansas        Little  Rock    ARKANSAS        AR
California      Sacramento      CALIFORNIA      CA
Colorado        Denver  COLORADO        CO
...
[download]

This will work even if the files are not alphabetized by state name.

In reply to Re: Combine files, while parsing info. by pc88mxer
in thread Combine files, while parsing info. by BioNrd

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		`&`
	<		`<`
	>		`>`
	[		`[`
	]		`]`

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.