Ferry, Craig wrote: > > My original data is in a database. I did really mean that field 1 in > file a could be any part of field 1 in file b. I also forgot to > mention that in addition to it being in any part of field 1 of file b, I > have to strip out special characters from file b before doing the > comparison. > > The reason I didn't keep it in the database, is that it seemed a little > more complex and one of my coworkers suggested perl. I am reasonably > proficient at writing SQLs, so maybe I need to go back to the drawing > board. > > Thanks for your suggestions.
Hi Craig Please keep your responses to the perl.beginners group so that others can both provide input as well as learn from your experience. Thanks. I suggest you stick with Perl but process the data directly from the database. Take a look at the DBI module, which isn't a standard one and so may need to be installed. Using that you can write SQL from within a Perl program, and I'm sure it will be a lot swifter that way. Even so, it looks to me as if what you need can be written in a single SELECT statement, in which case a Perl wrapper is simply an unnecessary overhead. Without knowing the full details of the problem it's hard to tell. Cheers, Rob -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://learn.perl.org/
