Re: Searching text files

not sure if you need anything fancy....something like (unix code)

grep $phone_num file1 file2 file3
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...sitting behind a primitive gui should do it. you can get a (standalone..without cygwin) grep.exe for windows as well. if you must call it from perl then just wrap inside backticks and assign the output to a variable

my $result = `grep $phone_num file1 file2 file3`;
if($result) {
  print "number is in blocked list";
}
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the hardest line to type correctly is: stty erase ^H

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Re^2: Searching text files by planetscape (Chancellor) on Sep 14, 2006 at 22:45 UTC
Not the way to solve the OP's problem, but for those who come across this in the future: gnu grep egrep tcgrep I also have what I hope is a comprehensive list of nix-like utilities for Windows here. Update:* It would seem, however, that several of those links are b0rk, so this should be the updated version: Perl Power Tools Cygwin The Berkeley Utilities - 40 unix commands ported to DOS GNU utilities for Win32 Unix Utils for DOS CMD Line Tools for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP Batch File Utilities HTH, planetscape	[reply]
Re^2: Searching text files by Not_a_Number (Prior) on Sep 14, 2006 at 19:04 UTC
you can get a <...> grep.exe for windows as well... Why bother, when windows has a native tool that serves a similar purpose: my $result = `findstr $phone_num file1 file2 file3`; if ( $result ) { print "DO NOT CALL $phone_num\n"; } else { print "You can annoy $phone_num with your gratuitous cold calling\n" +; } [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Searching text files by davido (Cardinal) on Sep 14, 2006 at 19:11 UTC
grep and findstr are both O(n) linear searches. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I think that's what the OP is trying to avoid; a linear search that takes O(n) time to fail. Dave	[reply]
Re^4: Searching text files by aquarium (Curate) on Sep 16, 2006 at 14:05 UTC
forget O(n) etc. the original poster was slurping the whole files into memory, which was the cause of the slowness. grep will match the number in the 3 files (several megs total) in about a second....which surely meets the criteria for response time. the poster is a beginner, so would be best for them to have a one liner with a 1 second response time..rather than complicated code with at best 0.5 second response time. the hardest line to type correctly is: stty erase ^H	[reply]
Re^4: Searching text files by Not_a_Number (Prior) on Sep 14, 2006 at 19:27 UTC
grep and findstr are both O(n) linear searches... Err, yes. But could you explain why you posted this as a reply to my node, which is explicitly tagged as a reply to aquarium rather than a solution to the OP's problem?	[reply]