lkenefic,
Let's break the problem down in pieces. For ease of explanation, I am assuming CSV files rather than .xls/.xlsx. 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Text::CSV_XS;

my $file = $ARGV[0] or die "Usage: $0 <input_file>";

my $csv = Text::CSV_XS->new({binary => 1}) or die "Unable to instantia
+te CSV object: ", Text::CSV_XS->error_diag();

open(my $fh, '<', $file) or die "Unable to open '$file' for reading: $
+!\n";
while(my $row = $csv->getline($fh)) {
    # Do something with $row
}

[download]

That code doesn't do anything useful by itself, but it lays the foundation for processing a CSV row by row. Now consider the following incomplete snippet. 

my %lookup;  # The hash that maps "in-house" to "different" and vice v
+ersa

while (my $in_house_row = $csv->getline($fh)) {
    my $sample_name = $in_house_row->[0];
    next if ! defined $lookup{$sample_name};
}

[download]

The above snippet shows how to skip rows that do not have a common value between the two files. I do not expect this to solve your problem. I have completely left out the "merge" portion because I do not know what you mean. This should help you articulate exactly what problem you are having as well as demonstrate it with code and real data. You might even want to hand construct the simplest of examples with the expected output.

Cheers - L~R

In reply to Re: Merging data by Limbic~Region
in thread Merging data by lkenefic

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