Add Line break when first of a line changes

[Jack Butchie]

I have a txt file of products that I would like to be able to insert a blank 
line whenever the name of the product changes, to make it easier to read.  I 
found this srcipt hunting about but I don't know how to apply it to the text 
file. I've tried all kinds of different things but just don't get it.


example of text file named: products.txt

LAWN SEED    34.00    RED
LAWN SEED1    36.00    BLUE
LAWN SEED1    36.00    BLUE
LAWN SEED1    36.00    BLUE
LAWN SEED2    37.00    PINK

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

my $file = shift @ARGV;

open IN, $file or die "Couldn't open $file: $!";
my $before_line;
while (my $new_line = <IN>) {
 print "\n" if ( $before_line and $before_line ne $new_line );
 print $new_line;
 $before_line = $new_line;
}

close IN;


--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org
For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org
http://learn.perl.org/