Hi monks,

I need to do the following, comparing two files with known variations.

Format

file-1:
DateWithTime$#$IDfield$#$Duration$#$


file-2:
DateWithTime$#$IDfield$#$Duration$#$


Where i should do the comparison of these two files. The variation which i need to incorporate is, in the first field time difference can be 1 sec, or 1 minute, or 1 day. IDfield difference can be, 1 or 2. Duration can be, 5 second difference.

Example:

file-1:
07/01 10:11:30$#$101$#$4 Sec$#$
file-2:
07/01 10:12:30$#$101$#$8 Sec$#$

Here the time difference allowed up to 2 min, and duration difference allowed is up to 5 sec. So now we need to mark these two lines are same.
One more thing is, both the file may have 25,000 lines each minimum, which i need to compare and display a report.

So, what is the best way to do this ?

Is there any tool, or any module to do this ?

Update: 25000 lines each to 25,000 lines each minimum. And one more question which will be a good delimeter in Perl. I use $#$ in other languages, but here $ mentions scalar, so what is good delimiter here ?