[Librarysystem]

HI,
I use the following code, which works, but i only have 7 lines and it prints 34 lines (repeating some). Can you help me figure out what i'm doing wrong? we sort by shelf key 13 but print the call number 14


#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
$data_file="youthbooksc.txt";
open(DAT, $data_file);

@L=();
%Sortbyshelfkey=();

while(<DAT>)
{
chomp;

@L=split(/\|/, $_);
@{$Sortbyshelfkey{$L[13]}}=@L;

foreach my $f (sort keys %Sortbyshelfkey)
{
print "Call #: $Sortbyshelfkey{$f}[14] \n"; #
}

}

[sco08y]

First off, it's printing 74 with reps because you're printing each time you read a line. Look at how your curly braces are nested.

To make your code a little easier to debug, use some lexicals and use strict.

I don't have the actual data, but try these general changes:

use strict;

my $data_file="youthbooksc.txt";
open(my $dat, $data_file);

my(%Sortbyshelfkey);

while(<$dat>)
{
chomp;
 # No reason to declare @L outside the scope that it's actually used.
my(@L)=split(/\|/, $_);
# This does the same thing your code did but makes it clear that 
# you're creating a reference to an anonymous array.
$Sortbyshelfkey{$L[13]}=[@L];
}

foreach my $f (sort keys %Sortbyshelfkey)
{
    print "Call #: $Sortbyshelfkey{$f}->[14]  \n"; 
# And this makes it clear that you're dereferencing that array.
}

[Librarysystem]

thanks,
yes, it wasn't so much repeating as starting with 1st line, then 2nd line (with the new one sorted), 3rd line etc.

thats solves it.
-mw