The following two statements about what you are trying to do seem very different to me.

If the groups are the same, I would like to look at the first numerical value. If they are within 10 of each other, I would like to take the lesser value and then look at the second number. If they are within 10, I would like to take the greater value.
I want at least 10 units of separation between the max of one element and the min of the next.

If you have the following:

group1 10 15
group1 22 50

[download]

Do you want these to be merged because the "separation" between 15 and 22 is less than 10 or not merged because neither 10 and 22 nor 15 and 50 are within 10 of each other?

In reply to Re^3: compare values within a hash by ig
in thread compare values within a hash by rookierabbit

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.