Here's a start. This is actually pretty close to the algorithm that nefigah described (though I wrote it before reading that).

use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dumper;

my $last_hour = 23;
my %best_of;

while (<DATA>) {
    my ( $quote, $time ) = m{ \A         # beginning of line
                              ( [^,]+ )  # non-commas
                              \s* , \s*  # comma with optional spaces
                              (          # open capture
                               \d\d?     # hours
                               :
                               \d\d      # minutes
                               :
                               \d\d      # seconds
                              )
                            }xms;
    my ( $hour, $min, $sec ) = split /:/, $time;

    if ( '00' eq $sec && '00' eq $min && -1 == --$hour ) {
        $hour = $last_hour;
    }

    my $seconds_past = $min * 60 + $sec;
    if ( ! $seconds_past
        || $best_of{ $hour }{second} < $seconds_past ) {
        $best_of{ $hour } = { second => $seconds_past,
                              time   => $time,
                              quote  => $quote, };
    }
}

print Dumper \%best_of;

__DATA__
1.53311 ,1:59:52
1.53311 ,1:59:5220
1.53311 ,1:59:52
1.53311 ,1:59:52hi
1.53311 ,2:00:00
1.53306 ,2:00:03
1.53307 ,2:00:06
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Here's the output:

$VAR1 = { 
          '1' => { 
                   'quote' => '1.53311 ',
                   'time' => '2:00:00',
                   'second' => 0
                 },
          '2' => { 
                   'quote' => '1.53307 ',
                   'time' => '2:00:06',
                   'second' => 6
                 }
        };
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This pops out a couple of warnings ("Use of uninitialized value in numeric lt (<)") in the last condition because it's comparing $seconds_past to an undef that gets autovivified in %best_of.

Anyway, what you end up with is a hash with each hour seen as a key. The values are hash refs that contain the data you're interested in.

great, thats fantastic Kyle..

the data will be a lot more useful to have the values in some kind of array cos i plan to manipulate it further later .. your code with be invaluable to me as a base structure.

can i just ask , how i get the time variable to deal with phantom extra digits? e.g 1:59:52hi

how do i get it to disregard the extraneous data at the end? thanks again

The pattern I used already does that, as written. The pattern matches everything you want, up to the extraneous data, and that's where it stops.

The problem with it (if you consider this a problem) is that the loop doesn't notice if there's a non-match. If you have some bogus line in the file, it's going to try to use it anyway. This will probably manifest as an undef quote at midnight. That's part of why I said it's a start.

It's possible there's some tools out there that would make this easier, but to tackle it yourself, here are some ideas to get you started. If you need specific help on a certain part of this, just ask.

Create a hash or something to hold the data you want to keep. One idea might be to have the keys be like '1', '1.5', '2', '2.5' etc. (i.e. a key for the hour and a key for the half hour for each of the 24 hours).

Open the file and go through it line by line, using a regex to separate each line into separate chunks for Quote, Hour, Minute, and Second. This should be relatively painless because the lines seem to be delimited pretty clearly.

Look at the Hours and Minutes returned from the current match to find out where that line should be placed in your hash. (i.e. if $hour = 12 and $minute = 37, it would go in $hash{'12.5'}) and place the quote there. Assuming the file is in chronological order, this should do it for ya. If it's not, you may have to keep track of the seconds and do a comparison to determine if the new value is "higher".

Hopefully that gets you going in the right direction.

I have put this ugly looking thing together.. which does seem to work..

use strict;

my $input = "quotes.txt"; 

my ($quote,$time);
my $actualquote;
my $actualtime;

my $hour;
my $minute;
my $second;

my $picksecond;

open(DATAFILE, "$input") || die("Can't open $input:!\n");

$picksecond =1;
while (<DATAFILE>) {
       
        chomp $_;
        ($quote,$time) = split(",", $_);
        
    ($hour,$minute,$second) = split(":",$time);
    
    if ($second==0) 
        {$actualtime=$time; $actualquote=$quote;$picksecond=99;}

        if ($second>$picksecond)
        {$picksecond=$second;$actualtime=$time; $actualquote=$quote;}

    print "$quote\t$time\t$second\n";
    

}
print "$picksecond\t$actualtime\t$actualquote\n";
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Does anyone care to comment on my code..??

i have another outstanding issue..

when i have a messed up time field e.g 17:30:07fg

how do i get the split command to ignore any characters after the 2 seconds digit? thanks.

7-27-setII.pm
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