in reply to How can I use a text file as a search string?

If you are searching for literal strings, and don't *really* need regexs, then you could create a hash, where each name in the .txt file is one you're expecting. To search, you'd just use exists($hash{$name_to_check}) to see it was in your text file. 
my @names_to_check = qw/ bob sue joe /;
my %validnames = ();
# build lookup
while(<>) {
  chomp;
  $validnames{$_}++; # also filters dups in *.txt
}
# check names
for (@names_to_check) {
  print "$_ is okay\n" if (exists($validnames{$_}));
}

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The <> of course implies STDIN, so you'd have to redirect or pipe the contents of *.txt into the script at the commandline.

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Re^2: How can I use a text file as a search string?
by btobin0 (Acolyte) on Dec 06, 2007 at 06:30 UTC
    This is what ihave so far. the part that is asking to look for perl. I want to change it to where it looks in a list like a txt or dat file. 
    
open FILE, "/home/btobin/data.txt" || die "Unable to Open: $!";
while (<FILE>) {
    if ($_ =~ "Perl") {
        $check = "$_";
        }
}
close FILE;

open FILE2, ">>/home/btobin/data2.txt" || die "Unable to Open: $!";
print FILE2 "$check\n";
close FILE2;

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