Question : Simple perl sort question

Hi - What I need to do appears to me to be quite a simple task but i'm having difficulties with it. I need to take the contents of a file, and sort the records alphabetically. Logically, I figured I could create an array from the file contents and use a sort on that array but for whatever reason, that does not work. Here is a sample of the file contents:

clmsserver01 MEMORY.MEMORY.MEMPageFreed ALARM:value=285 at 11/04/2003 13:17:23  --  c
se1
clmsserver02 MEMORY.MEMORY.MEMPageFreed WARN:value=86 at 11/04/2003 13:18:06  --  cse
1
faxserver01 FILESYSTEM.root.FSCapacity ALARM:value=96 at 11/04/2003 13:18:30  --  uc
se1
clmsserver03 FILESYSTEM.proc.FSCapacity ALARM:value=100 at 11/04/2003 13:18:28  --  c
se1
webserver01 FILESYSTEM.apps.FSCapacity WARN:value=90 at 11/04/2003 13:18:25  --  uc
se1

All I want to do is sort each record alphabetically by system name. Could anyone provide a quick solution to do this?

Thanks!

Answer : Simple perl sort question

don't you want first to create the array in the while loop, sort this array after the while loop and then writing it to a file? [if I my interpretation of your problem is correct ...]

instead of
my @list = $final_output;
you will have to do:
push(@list, $final_output); #add one element to the array

@list = sort @list; # is a correct syntax, but I assume you have to add this after the while loop

The complete script....

#/usr/bin/perl

##### Variable Declarations #####

my $input_file = '/patrol/patrol7/oxhpscripts/patrolnotifyemail_3183.log';
my $unix_alarms = '/patrol/patrol7/oxhpscripts/unix_thresholds.log';

print "Checking log file for Unix Alarming systems...\n\n";
sleep 2;
print "Done.\n";
sleep 1;

open (INPUT_FILE, "$input_file") ||
    die ("Cannot open input file, $input_file, for reading.\n",
       "OS_ERROR: $!\n");
open (UNIX_ALARMS, ">$unix_alarms") ||
    die ("Cannot open output file, $unix_alarms, for writing. \n",
       "OS_ERROR: $!\n");

my $header = "============================= Patrol Systems in Alarm State ======
======================\n\n\n";
my $columns = "System     Parameter                   Message             Date
   Time         Grp\n";
my @list;
while( defined( my $line = ) ) {
    next if ($line =~ /^\s*$/); # skip blank lines.
    my ($system, $param, $msg, $at, $date, $time, $dash, $method) = split(/\s+/, $
                                                        line); # split
    next if ($msg =~ /WARN/); # eliminate non-required entries
    next if ($msg =~ /OK/);
  next if ($date =~ /04/);
    next if ($param =~ /itcc.itcc/);
    my $sep = "-------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------\n";
    my $final_output = sprintf "%-10s %-20s %-15s %-2s %-8s %-8s %-3s %-5s %s\n",
    $system, $param, $msg, $at, $date, $time, $dash, $method;
    push(@list, $final_output); #ADD ELEMENT TO ARRAY;
   
    # @list = sort @list; MOVE TO THE END
    #print UNIX_ALARMS $sep, $final_output;
    #print UNIX_ALARMS $sep, @list;
    # print UNIX_ALARMS @list; MOVE TO THE END
}

@list = sort @list;
print UNIX_ALARMS @list;


##### close open files #####
close INPUT_FILE;
close UNIX_ALARMS;

sleep 1;
exit 0;