Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I haven't done this for awhile, and further, I've never done it in perl so I appreciate any help you can give me.

I have a file of lines, each with 5 data points that look like this:

AB,N,ALLIANCEBERNSTEIN HLDNG L.P,AB,N
ALD,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N
AFC,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N

Let's call it: a,b,c,d,e

Every time a == d and b == e, I want to then search every other line in the file and find where a == d(newline) and a == e(newline). Whenever this is the case, I want to append the a,b data from the newline to the original line such that it reads: a,b,c,d,e,a(newline),b(newline).

Using the data above, we would output something like this:

AB,N,ALLIANCEBERNSTEIN HLDNG L.P,AB,N
ALD,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N,AFC,N
AFC,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N

I'm also not sure how many total matches there might be in the file so I could end up with ~100 matching lines for any original line such that the final result for the original line would look like: a,b,c,d,e,a(newline0),b(newline0)...,a(newline100),b(newline100)

Does that make sense?

Read your question and correct /clarify what you want to do. What you say in your question and what you show as the example output don't seem to match.

Sure. Let's go step by step with it. We have: a,b,c,d,e

1. I want to identify all lines of a file where a==d && b==e such that the bold line would be located

ALD,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N
AFC,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N

2. Next, when this happens, I want to search all other lines and find where a==d(newline) && b==e(newline):

ALD,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N
AFC,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N

3. When I find one of these lines, I want to append a(newline),b(newline) to the end of the original line such that:

ALD,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N,AFC,N
AFC,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N

4. There will be multiple instances where a==d(newline) && b==e(newline), and each instance of this will have a unique a(newline), b(newline), such that the final output will look something like:

ALD,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N,AFC,N,a(newline0),b(newline0)...,a(newlinen),b(newlinen)
AFC,N,ALLIED CAPITAL CORPORATION,ALD,N

Is that more clear?

Actually, nevermind, I figured it out, which is far more satisfying.

Code:

open FH,"<a.txt";
while(<FH>){
	tr/\n//d;
	@tmp=split(",",$_);
	if(($tmp[0] eq $tmp[3]) && ($tmp[1] eq $tmp[4])){
		$str=$_;
		$str1=$tmp[0];
		$str2=$tmp[1];
		next;
	}
	if(($str1 eq $tmp[3]) && ($str2 eq $tmp[4])){
		$str=$str.",".$tmp[0].",".$tmp[1];
	}
}
close FH;