I hope this is a simple fix. I want to check the beginning characters of items in a hash, and compare that to a scalar variable. I do not need for the entire value to match; just the first couple of characters. Here is a simple example of what I want, but it does not work. Both "if" statements produce a match. I have read several web pages, but I have not found one that has exactly what I need. Thank you for any help on this. Tim
my $prefix_search_list = '03S,04S'; my @prefix_array = split /\,/,$prefix_search_list; my %prefix_hash = map {$_ => 1 } @prefix_array; #compare 05S to 03S and 04S my $input_field = "05S885858"; #should not match if ( $input_field =~ /$prefix_hash/ ) { print "$input_field is found in hash\n"; } else { print "$input_field is not found\n"; } #compare 03S to 03S and 04S $input_field = "03S84844"; #should match if ( $input_field =~ /$prefix_hash/ ) { print "$input_field is found in hash\n"; } else { print "$input_field is not found\n"; } -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/