I have data with patients information ( a tab delimited file with a header) that I read into an array . what I wan to do is extract from the array patients with specific characteristics, like a person is a female with body mass index > 40 and blood pressure >135. Instead using an if statement to do that, is there another way to extract this information into an array? Also, to do this, I have to know the location of these variables in my file ( what is the column number for sex, body mass index and blood pressure), is there a way to use the header of the file to point to the variable of interest instead of counting the columns?

Your help is greatly appreciated

In reply to how to extract data from an array using a condition by kayj

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