use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my ($file1 ,$file2,$file3)= @ARGV; open(my $fh, '>', $file3) or die $!; #reading file1 into a hash my %hash; my @fields; open( my $fh1, '<', $file1 ) or die $!; while ( my $line = <$fh1> ) { chomp $line; next if $line =~ /^\s*$/; $line =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g; $hash{$line} = 1; } #print Dumper(\%hash); close $fh1; open( my ($fh2), $file2 ) or die $!; while ( my $row = <$fh2> ) { chomp $row; #print "$row\n"; next if $row =~ /^\s*$/; $row =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g; my (@fields) = split( /\|/, $row ); # print "$fields[0]\n "; if ( exists $hash{ $fields[0] } ) { print $fh "$row\n"; } } close $fh; close $fh2;