File Manipulation - Need Advise!

nashkab has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I Have a file which looks like this:-

COMPUTER      DISTRIBUTION_ID    STATUS    
30F-WKS     `1781183799.xxxx1'      IC---
30F-WKS     `1781183799.xxx11'      IC---
ADM34A3F9   `1781183799.41455'      IC---
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IF TWO RECORDS EXIST FOR THE SAME INSTANCE OF COMPUTER... I WANT TO KEEP THE FINAL RECORD AND REMOVE THE FIRST RECORD. FOR EXAMPLE, COMPUTER 30F-WKS HAS TWO RECORDS.I WANT TO REMOVE THE FIRST RECORD AND KEEP THE SECORD.

I have used the following code:-

open(FILE2,">file1.txt")|| warn "Could not open\n";

open(FILE3,"file2.txt")|| warn "Could not open\n";

my $Previous = "";
my @data = <FILE3>;

    $index=0;
    foreach $_data (@data) 
    {
        $index++;
        chomp ($_data);
                @Current = split(/\t/, $_data);
        @Previous = split(/\t/, $Previous);
        if (@Current[0] ne @Previous[0])
        {
            if ($index == 1)
            {    
                # do nothing.    
            }
            else
            {
                print FILE2 $Previous;
            }

        }

                else {} 

        $Previous = $_data;
                 
        }

close(FILE2);
close(FILE3);
[download]

So the output file will look like this:-

COMPUTER      DISTRIBUTION_ID    STATUS</br>
30F-WKS     `1781183799.xxx11'      IC---</br>
ADM34A3F9   `1781183799.41455'      IC---</br>
[download]

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