Counting things while going into an array

[token]

I've just come up stumped on this one.

Basically, I'm parsing a log file. I want to count each time an occurence of something is in the file. I can open the file and read it in...it's just the counting part I can't figure out. I want to end up with something like this:


this_thing - 200 times
that_thing - 12 times
other_thing - 156 times


Any suggestions?

[Talleyrand]

I like to use hashes for this ... keeps things (mostly) neat while keeping track of data. Be careful, though, hashes can get out of hand if you go nuts with 2+ dimensions


So like, you'd have some hash %count
Each time what you want is hit, you'd increment the appropriate key...

$count{'this_thing'}++

And if what you're coming across is variable, you can use whatever is set in the variable as a key name ... this works well for pattern matches.

my ( $pattern ) = $log_line =~ /(some pattern)/;
$count{$pattern}++;

Make sense?

Of course, with PERL, there's always more than one way to do it

Hope that helped.

Talleyrand

[token]

Yeah, I think that's pretty much what I was looking for. I can adapt that to my needs perfectly.

And yes, it will be variable data, but it will always be in the same format in the same place in the log file on each line. Apply a li'l regex and I'm good.

Thanks Much,

Token