I think you want to split on tab instead of space, (@skeyw) = split(/\t/,$search_line);

I need something similar to node_id=266457. The idea is to grab search results out of 2 tab delimited text files but keep the results of each file in separate scalers or maybe arrays to be printed separately later.

open (SIDX, "$data_dir/search.idx");
open (SIDX2, "$data_dir/search2.idx");

 if ($file_locking ne "No"){flock (SIDX, LOCK_SH) or die "Can't set lo
+ck for file: $data_dir/search.idx, $data_dir/search2.idx $!\n";}
    while (defined($line=<SIDX>) and ($premiumline=<SIDX2>))
    {
    $sline = $line, $premiumline;
    
    foreach $kwr (@skeyw, @premiumkeyw)
        {

        if (($sline =~ /$kwr/i) and ($kwr ne ""))
            {
            $toadk = "true";
            }
            
        }

        if ($toadk eq "true")
            {
[download]

Here is where I need the premiumline search results from SIDX2 along with the resultline form SIDX.

            $resultline[$icnt] = $line;
            $toadk = false;
            $icnt++;
            }

    }
 #if ($file_locking ne "No"){flock (CIT, LOCK_UN);}
close (SIDX);
close (SIDX2);

}
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I've looked and looked at your code, read the parent node and your other one and I'm not quite sure what you're actually trying to do. Still I think that you would be better off replacing the above code with the following:

# Attempt to lock only $data_dir/search.idx, if allowed
if ($file_locking ne "No")
{
        flock (SIDX, LOCK_SH) or die "Can't set lock for ".  
                "file: $data_dir/search.idx: $!";
}

# Read whole files in to arrays.  This is a really bad 
# thing to do if the files are potentially huge.  If 
# they are small (< 1000 lines), however this is okay.
my @sidx = <SIDX>;
my @sidx2 = <SIDX2>;

# Closing filehandles removes the locks
close (SIDX);
close (SIDX2);

# Make sure that the search files have the same lengths (I'm 
# guessing here, perhaps this isn't important to you).
unless(@sidx = @sidx2) {
        die "Search files are of differing lengths.";
}

# Remove empty strings from @skeyw and @premiumkeyw
@skeyw = grep {$_ ne ""} @skeyw;
@premiumkeyw = grep {$_ ne ""} @premiumkeyw;

# Build a big regular expression out of @skeyw and 
# @premiumkeyw for faster matching.
my $regexp = join('|', @skeyw, @premiumkeyw);
$regexp = qr/$regexp/;

foreach my $line (@sidx) {
        my $premiumline = unshift(@sidx2);  # destructive.

        # In the previous code you write:
        # $sline = $line, $premiumline;
        # this is the same as:
        # $sline = $line;
        # I'm going to guess that you mean the following:
        $sline = "$line, $premiumline";

        # Do our test to see if this matches our regexp
        if($sline =~ /$regexp/) {
               
                # do something with search results

                $resultline[$icnt] = $line;
                $icnt++;
        }
}
[download]

That should provide the same results as your code but faster and maybe more flexibly.

Hope this helps

jarich

Update: Fixed rather embarrassingly wrong use of != instead of ne in grep.

Also changed pop to unshift so elements come through in the same order.