1 Date: Jan 1 2001 3:30PM | ID: 1 | Code: open 
2 Date: Jan 1 2001 3:35PM | ID: 1 | Code: open 
3 Date: Jan 1 2001 3:37PM | ID: 1 | Code: hold
4 Date: Jan 1 2001 3:46PM | ID: 1 | Code: hold
5 Date: Jan 1 2001 4:10PM | ID: 1 | Code: open
6 Date: Jan 1 2001 4:35PM | ID: 1 | Code: hold
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If I understand you correctly, it seems that you just need to define an extra variable that contains the basepoint for the current calculations. I'll try to demonstrate this is pseudocode here:

my @currenttime=(); ## or initialize to the start time
my @totaltime=(); ## will hold the sums for each ID
foreach (@databaseline) {
## realistically, this will be something like 
## while (@values = $sth->fetchrow) when you convert to
## using SQL ( Look at the DBI module and the corresponding
## DBD module for your database )
  my ($dbtime,$code,$id)= &parseline($_); 
## This routine would split the line and convert 
## the date, passing back the useful values.
## When you get it out of SQL, you should have an array
## of values anyway, so it'll only be necessary to
## convert the date.
  $totaltime[$id]+=($dbtime-$currenttime[$id]) if $code eq 'open';
  $currenttime[$id]=$dbtime;
## we move the baseline to the time of the current record
}
## now the @totaltime array has the values you want.
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I have done somthing like this:

    my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:Sybase:server=CASTOR",$USER, $PASS);
    my $select = "select entrydate,status from database order by entry
+date";
    my $START = undef;
    my $STOP  = undef;
    my $CUSTHOLD = 0;
    my $LASTSTATE='';
    my $sth=$dbh->prepare($select);
    $sth->execute;
    while ( my $row = $sth->fetchrow_arrayref) {
        my ($entrydate,$statusid) = @$row;
        $LASTSTATE=$statusid;
    if ($statusid != "hold") {
            if($START) {
                $STOP = parse_date($entrydate);
                $CUSTHOLD += $STOP - $START;
                $START=undef;
            }
        }
    else {
            if (!$START) {
                $START = parse_date($entrydate);
            }
        }
        if(($LASTSTATE eq "hold") && defined $START) {
            $CUSTHOLD += time - $START;
        }
    }
    return($CUSTHOLD);
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the problem is some of my numbers come out obesly huge (and very wrong) and I cant quite figure out why.

Okay, I'll give this a shot; it appears you're looking for the logic, and not the code (which is good, because I'm not that good at Perl yet :). Anyway, here's my attempt at pseudocoding your problem:

my ($starttime, $isopen, $totaltime) = (0, 0, 0);
while (<TIMELOG>) {
   if (/open$/) {
      next if $isopen;
      $isopen = 1;
      $starttime = getseconds($_);
   }
   elsif (/hold$/ || /closed$/) {
      next unless $isopen;
      $isopen = 0;
      $totaltime += getseconds($_) - $starttime;
   }
}
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Well, that came out a bit closer to code than I had intended... oh well. I hope that helps.

Update: (1000 CDT 09 Jun) It occurred to me a bit more explanation might be in order. Basically, as I understand it, the key to your problem is to keep track of the first time you noticed the ID was in an open state, and only perform the addition to $totaltime when the ID moves out of the open state (and presumably, into one of the closed or hold states).

Also, having watched a bit of the CB discussion on this topic, I noticed that you want to run this in realtime. If that's the case, you may want to generate a fake log entry to be processed at the end with the current time and a non-open state to force the calculation of the open time. This would change the code to be more like this:

@lines = <TIMELOG>;
push @lines, makefake(time(), "closed");
for (@lines) {
   # Same loop body
}
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Update #2: Edited code and above comments on real time about current state.

I know it might not be the optimal method to do it, but it seems as if it should get the job done (if I understand the job to be done correctly). Try it out - if it doesn't work, let me know. If it does, let me know then, too - I never know when I might need this bit of code. :)

CheeseLord