grepping command line arguments out of an array in perl - arrays

Question

I have a file that looks like this:
[options42BuySide]
logged-check-times=06:01:00
logged-check-address=192.168.3.4
logged-check-reply=192.168.2.5
logged-check-vac-days=sat,sun
start-time=06:01:00
stop-time=19:00:00
falldown=logwrite after 10000
failtolog=logwrite after 10000
listento=all
global-search-text=Target Down. This message is stored;
[stock42BuySide]
logged-check-times=06:01:00
logged-check-address=192.168.2.13
logged-check-reply=192.168.2.54
logged-check-vac-days=sat,sun
start-time=06:01:00
stop-time=18:00:00
The script grinds the list down to just the name, start and stop time.
sellSide40, start-time=07:05:00, stop-time=17:59:00
SellSide42, start-time=07:06:00, stop-time=17:29:00
SellSide44, start-time=07:31:00, stop-time=16:55:00
42SellSide, start-time=09:01:00, stop-time=16:59:00
The problem is that I would like to filter out specific names from the file with comand line parameters.
I am trying to use the #ARGV array and grep the command line values out of the #nametimes array. Something like :
capser#capser$ ./get_start_stop SorosSellSide42 ETFBuySide42
The script works fine for parsing the file - I just need help on the command line array
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict ;
use warnings ;
my ($name , $start, $stop, $specific);
my #nametimes;
my $inifile = "/var/log/Alert.ini";
open ( my $FILE, '<', "$inifile") or die ("could not open the file -- $!");
while(<$FILE>) {
chomp ;
if (/\[(\w+)\]/) {
$name = $1;
} elsif (/(start-time=\d+:\d+:\d+)/) {
$start = $1;
} elsif (/(stop-time=\d+:\d+:\d+)/) {
$stop = $1;
push (#nametimes, "$name, $start, $stop");
}
}
for ($a = 0; $a >= $#ARGV ; $a++) {
$specific = (grep /$ARGV[$a]/, #nametimes) ;
print "$specific\n";
}
It is probably pretty easy - however I have worked on it for days, and I am the only guy that uses perl in this shop. I don't have anyone to ask and the googlize is not panning out. I apologize in advance for angering the perl deities who are sure to yell at me for asking such and easy question.

Answer 1

Your construct for looping over #ARGV is a bit unwieldy - the more common way of doing that would be:
for my $name (#ARGV) {
#do something
}
But really, you don't even need to loop over it. You can just join them all directly into a single regular expression:
my $names = join("|", #ARGV);
my #matches = grep { /\b($names)\b/ } #nametimes;
I've used \b in the regex here - that indicates a word boundary, so the argument SellSide4 wouldn't match SellSide42. That may or may not be what you want...

Answer 2

Use an array to store the results from the grep(), not a scalar. Push them, not assign. Otherwise the second iteration of the for loop will overwrite results. Something like:
for my $el ( #ARGV ) {
push #specific, grep { /$el/ } #nametimes);
};
print join "\n", #specific;

Answer 3

The easiest thing to do is to store your INI file as a structure. Then, you can go through your structure and pull out what you want. The simplest structure would be a hash of hashes. Where your heading is the key to the outer hash, and the inner hash is keyed by the parameter:
Here's is creating the basic structure:
use warnings;
use strict;
use autodie;
use feature qw(say);
use Data::Dumper;
use constant INI_FILE => "test.file.txt";
open my $ini_fh, "<", INI_FILE;
my %ini_file;
my $heading;
while ( my $line = <$ini_fh> ) {
chomp $line;
if ( $line =~ /\[(.*)\]/ ) { #Headhing name
$heading = $1;
}
elsif ( $line =~ /(.+?)\s*=\s*(.+)/ ) {
my $parameter = $1;
my $value = $2;
$ini_file{$heading}->{$parameter} = $value;
}
else {
say "Invalid line $. - $line";
}
}
After this, the structure will look like this:
$VAR1 = {
'options42BuySide' => {
'stop-time' => '19:00:00',
'listento' => 'all',
'logged-check-reply' => '192.168.2.5',
'logged-check-vac-days' => 'sat,sun',
'falldown' => 'logwrite after 10000',
'start-time' => '06:01:00',
'logged-check-address' => '192.168.3.4',
'logged-check-times' => '06:01:00',
'failtolog' => 'logwrite after 10000',
'global-search-text' => 'Target Down. This message is stored;'
},
'stock42BuySide' => {
'stop-time' => '18:00:00',
'start-time' => '06:01:00',
'logged-check-reply' => '192.168.2.54',
'logged-check-address' => '192.168.2.13',
'logged-check-vac-days' => 'sat,sun',
'logged-check-times' => '06:01:00'
}
};
Now, all you have to do is parse your structure and pull the information you want out of it:
for my $heading ( sort keys %ini_file ) {
say "$heading " . $ini_file{$heading}->{"start-time"} . " " . $ini_file{$heading}->{"stop-time"};
}
You could easily modify this last loop to skip the headings you want, or to print out the exact parameters you want.
I would also recommend using Getopt::Long to parse your command line parameters:
my_file -include SorosSellSide42 -include ETFBuySide42 -param start-time -param stop-time
Getopt::Long could store your parameters in arrays. For example. It would put all the -include parameters in an #includes array and all the -param parameters in an #parameters array:
for my $heading ( #includes ) {
print "$heading ";
for my $parameter ( #parameters ) {
print "$ini_file{$heading}->{$parameter} . " ";
}
print "\n;
}
Of course, there needs to be lots of error checking (does the heading exist? What about the requested parameters?). But, this is the basic structure. Unless your file is extremely long, this is probably the easiest way to process it. If your file is extremely long, you could use the #includes and #parameters in the first loop as you read in the parameters and headings.