From your past code, you appear to know how to open files. What you seem to be missing is that you should probably use split to get the data you want and then test the first element of the array that's created. I started writing a skeleton of the program, only to realize that I'm not sure that this is appropriate. If you do need assistance with homework, that's fine. Just let us know so that we can offer advice, rather than answers. Otherwise, you're cheating yourself in addition to your professor.

Cheers,
Ovid

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no, not homework. work work. i would post the code i have, but i've changed it so many times i don't know where i'm at. i just need to get that one row from the text file, then turn it into html.

malaga wrote:

...but i've changed it so many times...

With all due respect, this implies that you probably started coding your program without designing it first. Let's try a bit of pseudo-code mixed with step-wise refinement. Here's what you said you needed:

open a text file that has rows and colums (tab delimited), look for a name (in the first column), get the row that has the name so i can do stuff to it.

Break that into separate lines and you have pseudo-code!

open a text file (tab delimited)
look for a name in the first column
get the row that has the name so i can do stuff to it.
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That pretty much covers the task. Further refinement gets this:

open a text file
while I read a line from the file
    look for a name in the first column
    if the name is what I want, do stuff to the row 
end while
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Even more refinement:

# still pseudo-code here
open inputFile or die
while ( read line from inputFile ) {
    get first item from tab-delimited line
    if ( first item equals "something I need" ) {
        do something important
    }
}
close file
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That's a pretty simple example. However, larger programs can be tackled in a similar fashion (though I use Warnier-Orr). There's probably nothing in the above pseudo-code that you can't figure out. By breaking it down that way, it's much easier to conceptualize and follow the logic.

In fact, if you do have a problem with the above pseudo-code, I suspect that it's in the following line: "get first item from tab-delimited line". Now, rather than having a vague problem that you don't know how to approach (second quote above), you have a very specific task that is much easier to deal with.

Cheers,
Ovid

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#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $data;

# open file
open FILE , "< /home/you/your.file";

# extract data and store it in a hash of tables
while( <FILE> ) {
    @_ = split;
    $_ = shift @_;
    $data->{$_} = [@_];
}

# close file ;)
close( FILE );

# display result
foreach( keys %{$data}) {
    print $_ , "\t" , join "\t" , @{$data->{$_}} , "\n";
}
[download]

use enlightment; # ( thx clintp :)
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open FILE , "< /home/you/your.file";
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Bad form! When yer dealing with a newbie, it's best to show off those things in canonical form:

open FILE, "/home/you/your.file" or die "Cannot open: $!";
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And as long as we're being picky, the extra indirection with the reference isn't needed. And that join gives an extra tab. And some more code-bumming... (UNTESTED!)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my %data;
open FILE , "home/you/your.file" or die "Cannot open: $!";

# extract data and store it in a hash of tables
while( <FILE> ) {
      @_=split;
      $data{$_[0]} = [ @_ ];
}
close FILE;

foreach( keys %data) {
      print join("\t" , @{$data{$_}}), "\n";
}
[download]

There!

What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

You should do like perlstyle says and include all relevant information in the error message. In this case that includes the filename:

my $file = "home/you/your.file";
open (FILE, "< $file") or die "Cannot read '$file': $!";
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If this appears within a function I would normally use Carp and then confess to the sad situation...