This is a very good idea (the hash keys) but it won't work in my situation because the elements of the list are not unique. They can occur multiple times in the list, so how far along in the list you are makes a difference. I think you're right about the array. If I put each file into an array I can keep track of where I left off and move around. I was just trying to figure out how to do it without using an array because the lists are pretty long, 20K lines each. I guess that isn't much for Perl, but it would be better for keeping what's loaded into memory down if it wasn't all put into an array at once.

In reply to Re^3: Loop through 2 files in parallel by rwitmer
in thread Loop through 2 files in parallel by Anonymous Monk

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.