> Hi all, Hi Michael, > > I am having trouble with combining data from several files, > and I can't > even figure out how to get started. So, I am NOT asking for any code > (though pseudo-code is ok) as I would like to try figuring > this problem > out myself. So, if anyone can give me any references or hints that > would be great.
Thatīs a good approach :-) [..] > > Basically, I would like to concatenate the sequence of each > corresponding animal so that the various input files would > be out put > to a file like so: > [..] > > Notice that in the two files the data are not in the same > order. So, I > am trying to figure out how to have the script figure out what the > first organism is in FILE 1( say "cat" in this case) and find the > corresponding "cat" in the other input files. Then take the sequence > data (all the cat data) from FILE 2 and concatenate it to the cat > sequence data in FILE 1 to an output file. Then it should go > on to the > next organism in FILE 1 and search for that next organism in > the other > files (in this case FILE 2). I do not care about the order of > the data, > only that the "like" data is concatenated together. If memory is not a problem (i.e. the amount of data you're processing is rather small), I would read all files into a hash and concatenate them there. Something like: - open the first file - search for the beginning of an "organism" (say: ">cat"), read everything after this point - search in your hash if you already stored data of this organism - if yes, append your new sequence to the already existing data - if no, create a new key in the hash - repeat this until you run out of "organisms" - repeat the whole procedure until you run out of files I'd happily elaborate, but I don't want to spoil your approach of wanting to solve this by yourself. If you have any questions or need additional information, just post again. :-) > > Again, I do NOT want this solved for me (unless I am totally lost). > Otherwise, I'll never learn. I would just like either hints / > suggestions / pseudo code / even links to books or sites that > discuss > this particular topic. Meanwhile, I am eagerly awaiting my "PERL > Cookbook" and I'll keep searching the web. Another good starting point might be the "camel book" (O`Reilly: Programming Perl)... HTH, Philipp -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>