Skip header text when comparing time

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

I have a question....How can I compare two different times' but skip skip any lines that have text? Every 10 seconds a ping is sent out. For any time greater than 10 seconds I want to document that a packet was lost. The file contains headers for every 5 minutes. The problem is that whenever it comes across a header, it makes it look like a packet was lost. Any suggestions? My code is below. Thanks in advance.

foreach my $line (<FILE>) {     # Do following for each line infile
chomp $line;
if ($line =~ /^\b\d/){                  # Skip lines that contain text
($timestamp, undef, $out, undef, undef, undef, $in, undef)=split(/\t/,
+ $line);  # Sort out needed columns
my $seconds = ($timestamp - $last_time);     # Determine elapsed time
if ($seconds > .00012){           # For time longer than 10 seconds
 my $time = DateTime::Format::Excel->parse_datetime($timestamp); # For
+mat time/date
 my $logdate = $time->ymd;              # Date format
 my $logtime = $time->hms;              # Time format
 my $error_name = "$center Error Log $log_time";
open(PACKETS,">> /directory/logs/error_log.txt");
print PACKETS "Packet lost on $logdate at $logtime\n" or die "Can't op
+en file $!"; # Write to log file
 }
$last_time = $timestamp;          # Store as previous time to compare
[download]

Comment on Skip header text when comparing time Download Code

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Re: Skip header text when comparing time by Osiris1975 (Novice) on Jan 15, 2009 at 20:52 UTC
It would help if we knew what the header looks like. I think you would want to look for something unique in the header line that does not exist in the other lines. Do you have a sample of the input?	[reply]
Re^2: Skip header text when comparing time by ITmajor (Beadle) on Jan 20, 2009 at 21:15 UTC
Here is an example of the headers: oau-iperf-sip oau-iperf-sip s-oau-dr0 s-oau-dr0 s-swau-dr0 s-swau-dr0 swau-iperf-sip swau-iperf-sip swau-iperf-sip The headers may change, so I want to skip the line of headers completely and only compare the lines with numbers. When it comes across a header, I want it to skip that line but continue to compare the lines with numbers.	[reply]
Re^3: Skip header text when comparing time by Osiris1975 (Novice) on Jan 21, 2009 at 14:52 UTC
So, I imagine the headers will never have a time in them? Time has a a ":" in it that should be unique to them. So maybe instead of : `if ($line =~ /^\b\d/)` [download] You could use `if ($line =~ m/:/)` [download] I didn't test it since I don't have a sample of your input, but something along those lines should process your steps only if the lines have a colon in them. Alternatively, if the headers and only the headers contain "perf" in them, you could do `if ($line !~ m/perf/)` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]