#!/usr/bin/perl   

use 5.8.0;
use strict;
use warnings 'all';
use sort 'stable';

my ($first, $second) = @ARGV;
 
open my $fh => $first  or die "open first: $!\n";
chomp (my @words = <$fh>);
close $fh;

my $c = 0;
my %words = map {$_ => ++ $c} @words;
    
open my $sh => $second or die "open second: $!\n";
my @info;
while (<$sh>) {
    chomp;
    push @info => [split /\|/];
}
close $sh;

@info = sort {$words {$a -> [0]} <=> $words {$b -> [0]}} @info;

print "@$_\n" for @info;
__END__
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Abigail

Well, if you think the same, i can't be too wrong ;)

--
http://fruiture.de

The example given suggests he wanted a stable sorting, hence my "use sort 'stable'". Your code only gives a stable sorting because that happens to be the default on 5.8.0, but that may change in a future version of perl (and if a sort happens to be stable in pre-5.8.0, it's just a coincidence).

Abigail

I'm going to try to answer your question, but it would have been easier if you'd used the <code> and a few <p>aragraph tags to make it more readable. Please check out Writeup Formatting Tips.

1st file has words that are in specific order like this: (not alphabetic) GAVSTE GAVARC GAVADA GAVIMM GAVSP

So you open up the first file, and read it into a hash that defines the sort order: (I'm assuming there's newlines between the words in the first file)

#/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my %sortOrder;

# replace "file1" with the filename of the first file
my $currentOrder=0;

open(FILE1,"<file1") or die "Can't open 'file1', error $!";
while(<FILE1>) {
    chomp;
    # associate the current word with its place in the sort order
    $sortOrder{$_}=$currentOrder++;     
}

close(FILE1);
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I have to guess at where the newlines are, so I'm going to assume the 2nd file looks like:

GAVARC|10.3.|Tahkoluoto|1m
SOMMOL|10.3.|Tahkoluoto|7m
GAVSTE|7.4.|Preiviiki|1p
GAVARC|7.4.|Preiviiki|2p
SOMMOL|16.3.|Kallo|6m
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my @data;

open(FILE2,"<file2") or die "Can't open 'file2', error $!";

while(<FILE2>) {
    chomp;
    my ($keyField)=split /\|/,$_;
    die "Don't have a sort key for $keyField" unless exists $sortOrder
+{$keyField};
    # push in a reference to an array where the first 
    # element is the sort order.  This is the Scwartzian 
    # transform sorting method
    push @data,[$sortOrder{$keyField},$_];
}

close(FILE2);

my @sorted=map {pop @$_}
           sort {$a->[0] <=> $b->[0]}
           @data;

# I'm assuming you want the | delimiters in the output?
print join "\n", @sorted;
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Yves / DeMerphq
---
Software Engineering is Programming when you can't. -- E. W. Dijkstra (RIP)

Use a Hash!

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $guidefile = './guide';
my $flatfile = './flat';
my $delimiter = qr{\s*\|\s*};

my (%guide,@flat);

open GUIDE,'<',$guidefile or die "E: open($guidefile): $!";

{my $i = 0;
    while(<GUIDE>){ chomp; $guide{$_}=$i++ }
}

close GUIDE;

open FLAT,'<',$flatfile or die "E: open($flatfile): $!";

while( <FLAT> ){
    chomp;
    push @flat,[split /$delimiter/];
}

close FLAT;

foreach( sort { ($guide{ $b->[0] }||0) <=> ($guide{ $a->[0] }||0)  } @
+flat ){

    print join("\t",
        exists($guide{$_->[0]}) ? $guide{$_->[0]} : '-',
        @$_),"\n";

}
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open F1,"<1st.file" or die "can't open 1st.file: $!";
chomp(my @order = <F1>);
close F1;
my $c = 'a'x (1+(log @order)/3);
my %order = map {$_ => ++$c} @order;
open F2,"<2nd.file" or die "can't open 2nd.file: $!";
print map{/\|(.*)/s}
      sort
      map{$order{(/([^|]*)/)[0]}."|$_"}
      <F2>;
close F2;
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