I have two output files with various numbers of lines ... every line contains one number and, to simplify, only one number ... I want the script to take the first line of file1 and compare it with every line in file2, then move to the second line of file1 and compare it to every line of file2 ... etc

depending how i write the program i get either the first line of file1 compared to every line of file2, or each line of file1 compared to each line of file2

the script below prints to OUT only the first line of INLEFT with each line of INRIGHT ... it prints to the console the first line of INLEFT with each line of INRIGHT followed by only the first line of INLEFT ... this must be a very amateurish problem, but i would appreciate very much your help

Rudy

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
open (OUT, '>printout.txt');

open (INLEFT, '<outlefts');
open (INRIGHT, '<outrights');

while (<INLEFT>)
{
print $_;
$posleft = $_;

foreach (<INRIGHT>)
{
print $_;
$posright = $_;

print "$posleft\t$posright\n";
if ($posleft < $posright)
{
print OUT "$posleft\t$posright\n";
}
}
}

[edited by: phranque at 10:10 pm (utc) on April 7, 2008]
[edit reason] disable smileys [/edit]