get variable name from txt file

[ddsf]

Hello, I just a new Perl user. I have a question regarding the variables handleing.

I have a tab dlm text file. the format of the file looks like below: (it may contants about more than 1000 columns in the file)

ID name ...... age ........
1 a ......18 .....
2 b ...... 26 .....

I need extract the values for variable ID and age, then generate a new txt file with the two variables' information only. The variable age may locate at any column. So, how should I do?

Thanks a lot

dd sf

[eWish]

I am hoping that you at least tried to complete this task yourself first. So, if you post your code we might be able to help further.

Some stuff to read about in the meantime that might help you as well.

Make use of these two pragmas.
strict
warnings

Open the file for reading.
open

open (my $file_handle. '<', $file_to_read) || die "Can't open file: $file_to_read, $!\n";

Read the file line by line.

while(<$file_handle>)

Get rid of the newline endings.
chomp

Split on the delimiter then only get the columns you want.
split
slices

my ($id, $name, $age) = (split/\\t/, $_)[0,1,2];

Then do the rest of your stuff next.

--Kevin