http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=1220738


in reply to Find and replace based on unique identifier

Hi oryan,

Here is a solution that prints out the new file in correct order and doesn't use the existing file at all. It sets the input record separator to $/ = "*\n" and reads in 'chunks' of the file. Also, I found a trailing space at the end of each line which I removed prior to parsing the file. If your data does have these trailing spaces, then they would need to be accounted for. I'm assuming they aren't in the 'new' file, but got there by copy and paste.

The solution uses a Schwartzian transform to process the blocks.

#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; open my $new, '<', \<<EOF; Connection Culv=This is Line3 - New text here 333 333 This should be new too Conn Culvert Barrel=Culvert3 * Connection Culv=This is Line1 - New text here 111 111 This should be new too Conn Culvert Barrel=Culvert1 * Connection Culv=This is Line2 - New text here 222 222 This should be new too Conn Culvert Barrel=Culvert2 * EOF $/ = "*\n"; print map {$_->[0]} sort {$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]} map {[$_, /^Conn Culvert Barrel=Culvert(\d+)$/m]} <$new>;
Output was:
Connection Culv=This is Line1 - New text here 111 111 This should be new too Conn Culvert Barrel=Culvert1 * Connection Culv=This is Line2 - New text here 222 222 This should be new too Conn Culvert Barrel=Culvert2 * Connection Culv=This is Line3 - New text here 333 333 This should be new too Conn Culvert Barrel=Culvert3 *