mooker has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

hi all

I have a plain text file with a couple of hundred lines in it like so:

001 client 1
002 client 2
003 client 3
etc etc

My problem is that I need to loop through this file and print out the clients in alphabetical order - the thing is that each client must retain its order number, the reason being is that each client is a link, and pressing on this link prints out the client and its number to 2 input text boxes. Printing them out is no problem (using javascript) but I cant get perl to sort the client alphabetically while keeping the correct number.

I've written 2 subs - the first works fine as its the numbers that are printed but the second one has stumped me - I tried to use arrays, hashes etc but no joy

#this one works
sub getNumbers{
    foreach(@file){
        next if m/(^#|^$)/;
        my ($cltnbr, $cltname) = split ('   ', $_);
        print "<span class='spacer'><a href='#' title='$cltnbr' name='
+$cltname' onclick='fillText(this);'>$cltnbr</a></span>";
    }
}

[download]


#help!
sub getClients{
    foreach(@file){
        next if m/(^#|^$)/;
        my ($cltnbr, $cltname) = split ('   ', $_);
        print "<a href='#' title='$cltnbr' name='$cltname' onclick='fi
+llText(this);'>$cltname</a><br />";
    }
}

[download]


any help appreciated!

Mike

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: sorting a file
by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Oct 18, 2005 at 16:42 UTC 
    sub getClients{
    my @tuples = map [split '   ', $_] grep { !/^(?:#|$)/ } @file;
    foreach(sort {$a->[1] cmp $b->[1]} @tuples){
        my ($cltnbr, $cltname) = @$_;
        print "<a href='#' title='$cltnbr' name='$cltname' onclick='fi
+llText(this);'>$cltname</a><br />";
    }
}

    [download]
    Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: sorting a file
by InfiniteSilence (Curate) on Oct 18, 2005 at 17:50 UTC
    This is Roy Johnson's code, but changed a bit: 

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my @file;
while(<DATA>){
    chomp;
    push @file,$_;
}

&getClients;
#----------------------

sub getClients{
    my @tuples = map {[split /\s+/, $_]} grep { !/^(?:#|$)/ } @file;
    foreach(sort {$a->[1] cmp $b->[1]} @tuples){
        my ($cltnbr, $cltname, $clNum) = @$_;
        print "<a href='#' title='$cltnbr' name='$cltname $clNum' oncl
+ick='fillText(this);'>$cltname $clNum</a><br />";
        print qq|\n|;
    }
}

1;

__DATA__
001 client 1
002 client 2
003 client 3

    [download]

    Which produces: 

    <a href='#' title='001' name='client 1' onclick='fillText(this);'>clie
+nt 1</a><br />
<a href='#' title='002' name='client 2' onclick='fillText(this);'>clie
+nt 2</a><br />
<a href='#' title='003' name='client 3' onclick='fillText(this);'>clie
+nt 3</a><br />

    [download]

    Now, instead of using a global variable like the above you should pass it into the routine as a reference.

    Celebrate Intellectual Diversity

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      many thanks for your help - I couldnt get your code to work, but got round it a different, less sophisticated way. Will study map and grep tho

      i used

      sub getClients{
    my @sortedclients;
    my @joinedarray;
    foreach(@clients){
        next if m/(^#|^$)/;
        my ($cltnbr, $cltname) = split ('   ', $_);
        my $joined = join " ", $cltname, $cltnbr;
        push @joinedarray, $joined;
    }
    foreach(@sortedclients = sort @joinedarray){
        my ($cltname, $cltnbr) = split ('   ', $_);
        print "<a href='#' title='$cltnbr' name='$cltname' onclick='fi
+llText(this);'>$cltname</a><br />";
    }
}

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

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