Re: getting parts of the strings from a file into managable variables

Your data looks a little suspect (lacking a few /, and inconsistent case), but this parses it and builds a nested hash from it.

my $user;
my %uservariables;
while(<DATA>){
    chomp;
    my ($key, $value) = m{^<([^>]+)>(.*)<}i or die $_;
    $key = lc $key; #to adjust for case differences
    if ($key eq "userid"){
        $user = $value;
        next;
    }
    $uservariables{$user}->{$key}=$value;
}

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper(\%uservariables);

__DATA__
<UserID>46786<UserID>
<start>2004-10-21TO09:57:25Z</start>
<dev>Some Text</dev>
<var1>some string</var1>
<var2>some string</var2>
<USerID>57864</UserID>
<start>2004-10-25TO09:57:25Z</start>
<dev>Some Text</dev>
<var1>some string</var1>
<UserID>46786<UserID>
<var3>some string</var3>
<var4>some string</var4>
<UserID>98766</UserID>
<start>2004-10-21TO09:57:25Z</start>
<dev>Some Text</dev>
<var1>some string</var1>
<var2>some string</var2>
<var5>some string</var5>
<var6>some string</var6>
<USerID>57864</UserID>
<var4>some string</var4>
<var6>some string</var6>
[download]

Comment on Re: getting parts of the strings from a file into managable variables Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: getting parts of the strings from a file into managable variables by my_perl (Initiate) on Nov 12, 2004 at 18:01 UTC
Hi, thanks a lot for response, it is working great. What do i need to change if i have spaces before strings, and number of spaces is not constant? Thanks again :) Aida	[reply]
Re^3: getting parts of the strings from a file into managable variables by Eimi Metamorphoumai (Deacon) on Nov 12, 2004 at 18:26 UTC
Hmmm, you might try changing the regexp to something like `my ($key, $value) = m{^\s<([^>]+)>\s(.*)<}i;` [download] Although I'm starting to agree with the others that a real XML parser might be the way to go.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: getting parts of the strings from a file into managable variables by my_perl (Initiate) on Nov 19, 2004 at 17:42 UTC
Hi, how would i access these variables? foreach userid i would like to print only var1 , its value, and var2 , its value. foreach $key (keys %uservariables) { ??????? } THanks	[reply]
Re^3: getting parts of the strings from a file into managable variables by Eimi Metamorphoumai (Deacon) on Nov 19, 2004 at 17:54 UTC
Something like `for my $key (keys %uservariables){ print "User $key has var1: $uservariables{$key}->{var1}, var2: $user +variables{$key}->{var2}"; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: getting parts of the strings from a file into managable variables by my_perl (Initiate) on Nov 19, 2004 at 19:01 UTC
Thanks a bunch what if var2, var3 shows up few times for single userID and i would like just first occurence of var2 and last occurence of var3. Thanks :)	[reply]