Here's what I did:

[Tuna]

First, I can't say how amazing that all of you made time to answer my questions. Without you guys/gals, I probably wouldn't have a job, right now.

Here's how I solved it:

- Each config file has an accompanying ".hosts" file, whose contents are the hostnames of each machine in the cluster.
- Hosts 1-6 are contained on config_file.hosts
- Host 7 is contained in dnsfile_file.hosts

I have two hashes that I refer to in the code.

- %config_files - Keys = cluster directory, Value = an array ref to a list of each config file associated with that cluster.

- %config_params - Keys = config_file, Value = an array ref to a list containing config_file, config_file.hosts, user|preprocess.pl, user|postprocess.pl, and a file "weight"

foreach $componentDir ( keys  %config_files ) 
{
  $abs_cluster_dir = join("/", "$configdir", "$componentDir");
  
  @cluster_files = @{ $config_files{ $componentDir } };
  $href_cluster_files = \@cluster_files;
  &process_cluster( $abs_cluster_dir, \@cluster_files,
\%config_params, \$err_msg );
  
}


sub process_cluster {
  # subroutine parameters
  my $cluster_dir        = $_[ 0 ];
  my $aref_cluster_files = $_[ 1 ];
  my $href_config_params = $_[ 2 ]; 
  my $sref_err_msg       = $_[ 3 ];
  my $clusterHost;
  my $config_file;
  my $counter;
  my $file;
  my @files_to_process;
  my $hosts_file;
  my @target_hosts;
    
  $counter = 0;

  foreach $file ( @{ $aref_cluster_files } )
    {
      if (defined ( $href_config_params->{ $file } )) 
        {
          $files_to_process[ $href_config_params->{ $file }[ 3 ]] = $f
+ile;
        }
    }
  
  foreach $config_file ( @files_to_process )
    {
      $hosts_file = new IO::File ( "$abs_cluster_dir/$config_file.host
+s" );print "Hosts file = $hosts_file\n";
      unless ( defined ($hosts_file ))
        {
          $$sref_err_msg = $!;
          return 0;
        }
      
      $counter = 0;
      
      while ( ! $hosts_file->eof() )
        {
          $target_hosts[ $counter ] = ( $hosts_file->getline( ) ) ;
      chomp @target_hosts;
          $counter++;
        }
      
      $hosts_file->close( );
      
      foreach $clusterHost ( @target_hosts )

{  ####DO STUFF####  }

}

The trick here, is to assign a numerical weight to each file that I need to process, so that I can populate an array of config files in the order that I need to process them!!!

Again, thanks to you all, I began to consider alternatives.

Steve