Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I have a hash which is to be populated by reading data lines from a flat file. I am supposed to read fields 1-5 from the file and load them on to the hash such that fields 1-4 are going to be the hash key-set and field 5 is the hash value.

Field 5 is a monetary amount and is supposed to be summed for the same set of keys (fields 1-4).

This is how am doing the summation :

Code:

if (!$hash->{$field1}->{$field2}->{$field3}->{$field4} ) 
{
$hash->{$field1}->{$field2}->{$field3}->{$field4} = $field5;
}
else 
{
$hash->{$field1}->{$field2}->{$field3}->{$field4} = 
$hash->{$field1}->{$field2}->{$field3}->{$field4} + $field5;
}

This is working absolutely fine.
But the only thing which bothers me is - to process a file of 10000 data lines my code is taking more than a minute. Is there any other way which you think would be easier or would cost me less ?

Thanks.

Quite a bit more information is needed to really answer this question. Can you concatentate fields one through four together to contruct a single hash? If they are fixed width this should work fine. If not you would need to get more creative. But the idea to combine the fields to create a single hash key. And you possibly need to be able to reverse the operation... that is, when given a hash key be able to recreate the four fields it comprises. You wind up with just one hash with one lengthy key. This would be faster than your complex structure.