Its up to you to decide whether or not its worthwhile putting the data in a database, it may depend on the frequency you run the program, how many searches you do during each run of the program, etc. But it doesn't really take long to read each file into memory every time, so a quick 'n' dirty solution might be to read the file into a hash of hashes of hashes:
my %log_data;
open FH, $file or die "Can't open $file: $!";
while (<FH>) {
 my ($net_id, $mdy, $item) = split /\|/;
 $log_data{$net_id}{$mdy}{$item} = $_;
}

# Then cycle through data you're searching for
# and save/process it if its in the %log_data array

[download]

In reply to Re: Grep Speeds by runrig
in thread Grep Speeds by ImpalaSS

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.