Re: Search Efficiency

[Cirollo]

Perl doesn't read in the entire file each time through that loop. Each time through the loop, Perl just reads the next line from the still-opened file.

A few tidbits that might come in handy if you're doing anything more complex:

If you need to know the current line number, look at the $. variable (dollar dot).

The seek function can be used to go to a specific part of a file without reading the whole thing. The tell function returns the current file position in bytes, based at 0.

[particle]

Cirollo is right. and you want to be careful about where your hash is defined. if it's created inside the while loop, it will be regenerated after every match of the $userid. if it's created outside the while loop, you can add info to it and do your processing after the while loop ends. i suspect this might be the real problem behind your question,

Is there anyway to tell perl, "hey, you have already gone through x lines, don't start over at the beginning of the file when you loop back through?

by the way, always use strict and perl -w to keep your code on it's very best behaviour.

~Particle