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Hi folks,
One of my scripts uses a home-brewed flatfile database to store
information, and I've run up against a problem when I wish to sort
columns of data.
An example of the database file:
(items,fruit,date)
16,apples,20021118-1725
22,bananas,20021118-1648
4,grapes,20021118-1921
To open and place the items into an array, I do this (formatted so that
some mail client doesn't make it *really* unreadable :-P ) :
open ('FILE',"$databaseFile") || die;
@dbfile = <FILE>;
for ($a = 0; $a < @dbfile; $a++) {(
$items[$a],
$fruit[$a],
$date[$a],
$chop)=split(/,/,$dbfile[$a]);}
With a little pretty printing can show us the database in 3D. I'm not
going to include the code for pretty printing here as it is unimportant,
but the output I think is:
[0]16,[0]apples,[0]20021118-1725
[1]22,[1]bananas,[1]20021118-1648
[2]4,[2]grapes,[2]20021118-1921
Now my problem is that I can sort the database by 'items', both
ascending and descending order:
(ascending)
@dboutfile = sort {($a =~ /(\d+)/)[0] <=> ($b =~ /(\d+)/)[0]} @dbfile;
(descending)
@dboutfile = sort {($b =~ /(\d+)/)[0] <=> ($a =~ /(\d+)/)[0]} @dbfile;
But I can't seem to sort the database by any of the other fields. I've
tried incrementing the '0's and changing '\d+' to '\w+' but I can't get
it into reverse alphabetical or chronological order or any other sort
type other than ascending or descending 'items' order.
Does anybody know what I'm waffling about, and can solve this problem,
or am I really blessed with programmers illiteracy? Thanks all,
GL
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Gavin Laking - Web Development Daemon
http://www.gavinlaking.co.uk
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