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in reply to creating hash of hashes from input file

In general, this kind of problem is very easy to solve in Perl, but your data poses a few problems.

  1. You have multiple columns with the same name
  2. You have commas in your data
You will need a more sophisticated data model than a simple hash, or a method for coming up with unique hash keys. The following is therefore simplistic but shows what can be done.

use strict; use warnings; chomp(my $datafile = shift || 'data.file'); my $outputfile = 'output.file'; my @keys_in_display_order = qw/Activity Status Valuation/; my (%hash); open my $ifh, '<', $datafile; open my $ofh, '>', $outputfile; printf $ofh "%s\n", join '|', @keys_in_display_order; while(<$ifh>) { next unless $_; if (/^$keys_in_display_order[0]/) { print_it(); %hash = (); } $hash{$1} = $2 if (m/(.+):(.+)$/); } print_it(); close $ifh; close $ofh; sub print_it { return unless (%hash); printf $ofh "%s\n", join '|', @hash{@keys_in_display_order}; }
cat output.file Activity|Status|Valuation C2012-0106|ISSUED|$339,784.94 C2012-0107|ISSUED|$306,963.74
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 (NASB)