Re: Grouping unique lines into a file.

[Limbic~Region]

Anonymous Monk,
If I have understood what you are trying to do, it boils down to these requirements:

• A single file contains multiple lines.
• Each line is comprised of an account and then data
• The desired end state is for each account to be in its own file
• Any duplicate data for an account should be ignored

Assuming the above is correct, here is how I would do it:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my %seen;
while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    my ($acct, $data) = $_ =~ m{^(\d\d)(.*)};
    next if $seen{$acct}{$data}++;
    append_data($acct, $_);
}

# If you know you are not going to exceed the open filehandle limit
# You can improve performance by caching filehandles
sub append_data {
    my ($acct, $line) = @_;
    open(my $fh, '>>', "$acct.txt") or die "Unable to open '$acct.txt'
+ for appending: $!\n";
    print $fh $line;
}

Here is how it would look if you know you will be safe caching file handles.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my (%seen, %fh);
while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    my ($acct, $data) = $_ =~ m{^(\d\d)(.*)};
    next if $seen{$acct}{$data}++;
    append_data($acct, $_, \%fh);
}

# Improved performance by caching filehandles
sub append_data {
    my ($acct, $line, $fh) = @_;
    if (! $fh->{$acct}) {
        open($fh->{$acct}, '>>', "$acct.txt") or die "Unable to open '
+$acct.txt' for appending: $!\n";
    }
    print { $fh->{$acct} } $line;
}