I was thinking about the use of arrays...my ids are pretty big numbers so I wouldn't use them alone as array indices. I could always use $., however, when I read in the file rather than the id.

My ranking is based on # of seconds from last log entry in one file to first log entry in the second file. So I create scoring by looking at # of seconds between each record. My ability to identify a "strong match" comes from the rate of concurrent users in the application that my data comes from. Low concurrent users, I'll have lots of strong matches - records that clearly line up. If I have high concurrent users with lots of log file entries, then I've got to get a little creative.

I was sorting b/c my hash is being used to store # of elapsed seconds...not a true "rank" in terms of 1, 2, 3, etc.

I'm considering the use of arrays, but don't want to lose the elapsed seconds as data quite yet b/c that will be used in the next step to figure out the best match from the remaining data.