I was wondering if I could get some input on doing this a better way. I have two files.
File One has data that looks like:

012323444, 4.5 Nuts & Bolts    ,
234334323, Fuzzy Nut bunnies    , 
434454554, Pineapple Pops     ,
[download]

and so on........................

File Two has data that looks like:

3423434444, 45554342365, 012323444, 00000333, description 2 update1, d
+ata1, data2
4342344, 46565fg66, 234334323, 00004454, update this, data4, data6
523444234, 466763fg4, 434454554, 00005565, this too update, data7, dat
+a8
[download]

this is going to be a little hard to explain but here it goes. In file 2 I'm trying to update the descriptions (item 5 on each line) using
the descriptions in file 1. The numbers in column one of file 1 will be used as a key
to match numbers in column 3 of file 2, and then using the description in file1 replace the
the description in file 2 (which is column 5). I thought the best way to do this is:

• read file 1 into a hash so that the numbers and descriptions form key, value pairs.
• then process file2 like this:

#open file1, split each line delimited by comma and read into %hash
#assume $code, and $description are the key/value pairs of the %hash.

#open file2 and read into array
while <file2> {
my @array2 = <file2>;
}
#close file2

#open file2
foreach $item (@array2) {
 @values = split /,/;
 $values[4] = $hash{$values[2]}; # this should now put the new descrip
+tion from the hash

 print file2 $values[1], ", ", $values[2], ", ", $values[3], ", ", $va
+lues[4], ", ", $values[5], ", ", "\n";
                                 # writing the line back into file2
}
[download]

I don't know if this is was the cheeziest way to do this. But I'm sure there is a better way to do this
I'm still a newbie to PERL so I don't know if I can do this with a regex.
In a nutshell I begin with file2 read the code on column 3 then match the code in
file 1 and then get the description in file 1 and come back to file2 and update the description
on column 5.

Edit ar0n 2001-07-15 -- Fixed formatting

---

In reply to a hash/array problem and can contents of an array be printed as one line by shaezi

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