Thanks to blakem and mirod my code looks like this.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use diagnostics;
use Time::Local;
my (@records, @report);
{
my $data_file = 'test.dat';
open my $fh, $data_file or die "Can't open $data_file: $!";
while (<$fh>) {
# skip blank and commented lines
next if /^\s*#/;
next if /^\s*$/;
chomp;
# We'll look for lines that describe a report:
if (/report:\s+sort\s+(\S*)/ ) {
@report = split /,/, $1;
} else {
push @records, [split /,/];
}
}
}
my %field = ( source => 0,
time => 1,
sip => 2,
sport => 3,
dip => 4,
dport => 5,
hits => 6,
acl => 7,
lnum => 8
);
my (@sort_sub, @sort_description);
# Here is where we do the sub building
foreach (@report) {
my ($name, $order) = split /-/;
my $cmp = $name =~ /source|time/ ? 'cmp' : '<=>';
if ($order eq 'd') {
push @sort_sub,
qq|\@\$::b[$field{$name}] $cmp \@\$::a[$field{$name}]|;
push @sort_description, qq|$name:\t\tdescending|;
} else {
push @sort_sub,
qq|\@\$::a[$field{$name}] $cmp \@\$::b[$field{$name}]|;
push @sort_description, qq|$name:\t\tascending|;
}
}
# require 'sort.pl'; # created with begin
my $date = localtime;
$date =~ s/ /-/g;
### store report data in file
my $report_file_name = 'out.txt';
open my $fh, '>', $report_file_name
or die "Can't Open $report_file_name: $!";
print $fh
qq|\t\tREQUEST FOR SORTING\n\n|,
sort_description(), "\n\n",
qq|FILE WAS GENERATED ON: $date \n\n|;
my $sort = column_sort(\@sort_sub);
print $fh (join ',', @$_), "\n" for sort $sort @records;
sub column_sort {
my $ref = shift;
my $sort_sub = join " || ", @$ref;
return eval "sub { $sort_sub }";
}
sub sort_description {
return join "\n", @sort_description;
}
__END__
Thanks for the help,
Charles K. Clarkson