Hi everyone,
I have written a perl script to generate a logfile.
Basically, its like a post-it note, you type what you want to save and it appends it to a logfile.

Here is my current logfile, called '2004':

As you can see, each entry begins with a timestamp.

I need to be able to load this file, and then split it up so that each entry in the logfile is distinct (was thinking of each entry in the logfile = an element of an array). Then I can search through it and find the entries that match a certain search string and print each entry out.

But how can I separate each entry? I was thinking of a split on the timestamp, but I need the timestamp to be left in the element of the array. Can you split just before the timestamp? How would I go about reading this logfile into an array?

Thanks!

here's one solution, i prefer a hash to an array, it's quicker to index, and you can still treat it as an array with (keys %log).
just as i was finishing this, i realised that probably a better way would be to set $/ (or $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR in the "English" module) to "-----\n"

that way it'd read in the date for the first read, and the entry for the 2nd, but i'd pretty much finished by then


#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use warnings;
use strict;

my $file = '2004';

sub split_log($); #prototype

my %log = &split_log($file);

while (my $key = each(%log)) { print "$key = $log{$key}\n"; }

#--------------------------

sub split_log($) {

my $file = shift or die;
my %hash;

open LOG, $file or die $!;
$/ = undef;
my $log = <LOG>;
close LOG;
$/ = "\n";

my @split = split /\-{5}/, $log;

while (@split) {

my $date = shift @split;
my $entry = shift @split;
last unless $entry;

chomp $date;
chomp $entry;

$date =~ s/^\n//;
$entry =~ s/^\n//;

print "date = $date\n";
print "entry = $entry\n";

$date =~ s|^(\d{4})/(\d{2})/(\d{2}), (\d{2})\d{2})\d{2})|$1$2$3$4$5$6|;

$hash{$date} = $entry;

}

%hash;
}

Hey thanks,
I used the separator method, setting it to undef so the open file was read all into one string then went from there!
Cheers for your reply!