Some comments about your code:

1) If Grandfather hasn't told you by now, someone else surely will, but you need to use strict; and use warnings;

2) The hash element $AB{$foo} (on lines 8 and 21) is not the same as $Ab{$foo} (on line 20).

3) Your program is either a fragment or else you have forgotten to add data to the $AB/$Ab hash.

4) oshalla is dead on when he suggests a hash.

Let's see if we can make a working example of using a hash. We'll fudge opening two files by loading our "file1" and "file2" with a DATA statement and then using modal behavior to handle both files.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

my $mode = "start";
my %hash;
while(<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    if ( $_ =~ /file1/) {
        $mode = "read";
        next;
    }
    if ( $_ =~ /file2/) {
        $mode = "add";
        next;
    }
    if ( $mode eq "read" ) {
        $hash{$_} = 0;
    }
    elsif ( $mode eq "add" ) {
        my ( $key, $value ) = split " ", $_, 2;
        $hash{$key} = $value if ( exists($hash{$key}) );
    }
}
for ( sort keys %hash ) {
   print "$_ => $hash{$_} \n" if $hash{$_};
}


__DATA__

file1
Angel
Baker
Candy
Edward
Fox
file2
Angel 7
Fox 10
Gigantic 29
Candy 3

[download]
And the results are:

C:\Code>perl order_by_key.pl
Angel => 7
Candy => 3
Fox => 10

[download]

In reply to Re: Compare Arrays, Return Values by dwm042
in thread Compare Arrays, Return Values by de2425

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