I have found another way and require a little more help.
data.txt consists of records like

Code:

12345,ABCDE
23456,BCDEF
34567,CDEFG
45678.DEFGH

I run the following:

Code:

perl -pi -e "s/^/\{"\'"/" data.txt
perl -pi -e 's/^/\$map/' data.txt
perl -pi -e "s/\,/\'\} \= \'/" data.txt

and get:

Code:

$map{'12345'} = 'ABCDE

and need a single quote at the end, followed by semi-colon.

I realize that this is easy for you all but I'll be damned if I can get it right :-)

Thanks again,
Rick

---------- Post updated at 07:01 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:22 PM ----------

Hi again. So, here is the really weird thing.
$ /usr/bin/perl -v

This is perl, v5.8.8 built for i386-linux-thread-multi.....

However, when I run
$ perl -pi -e 's/$/FOO/' bar.txt

and bar.txt contains

Code:

12345,ABCDE

I get

Code:

FOO45,ABCDE

Honest. What do I do? This is replacing the beginning of the line and not the end. I am confuzelled.

Thanks, Rick

Moderator's Comments:

Once again - please use code tags