One of the main issues with your code is the nested while loops. With 1,000 rows in each file, that's 1,000,000 passes through the inner loop. See discussion below, With my solution (below), I've made one pass through the range file to populate a reference hash (%range) and one pass through the code file to check the reference hash (via a subroutine): that's 2,000 passes in total (assuming 1,000 rows in each file).

I see you've checked for the right number of arguments: that's good. You haven't checked whether these are files you can read: less good. Take a look at open: note how I've used lexical (my) variables for the filehandles, the preferred 3-argument form and included some error checking (you can improve the messages).

Here's my code: 

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

if (scalar(@ARGV) != 2) {
    print "Usage: perl $0 <range.txt> <code.txt>\n";
    exit -1; 
}   

my %range;

open my $fh_range, q{<}, $ARGV[0] or die $!;
while (<$fh_range>) { 
    my @range_data = split;
    push @{$range{$range_data[0]}}, [@range_data[1,2]];
} 
close $fh_range;

open my $fh_code, q{<}, $ARGV[1] or die $!;
while (<$fh_code>) {
    check_range([split]);
}
close $fh_code;

sub check_range {
    my ($key, $num, $dat) = @{+shift};

    if (! exists $range{$key}) {
        print qq{Key [$key] not found.\n};
        return;
    }

    for my $range_ref (@{$range{$key}}) {
        my ($min, $max) = @$range_ref;

        if ($num >= $min && $num <= $max) {
            print qq{Key[$key]-Num[$num]-Dat[$dat]}, 
                    qq{ in range Min[$min]-Max[$max]\n};
            return;
        } 
    }

    print qq{Key[$key]-Num[$num]-Dat[$dat] out of bounds.\n};

    return;
}

[download]

Here's the output. Note I've added an extra dummy record to test the out of bounds condition. 

$ pm_range_code.pl pm_range.txt pm_code.txt
Key[T2]-Num[34]-Dat[lit] in range Min[23]-Max[43]
Key [T3] not found.
Key[Tn]-Num[100]-Dat[net2] in range Min[66]-Max[124]
Key [Tk] not found.
Key[T2]-Num[100]-Dat[dummy] out of bounds.

[download]

-- Ken

In reply to Re: Value in the range struggling (once more) by kcott
in thread Value in the range struggling (once more) by poegi

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