[vox-tech] which tool is right for the job... (scripting languages)

[Dylan Beaudette]

Greetings,

I have a flat text file with records with the following properties:
key, percent, class

For any given key, there may be more than one record - with any 1 of 12 
possible classifications. The records occur in 2 types of patterns:

1) For a given key, it is clear which class is 'dominant' , as its 
percentage is the highest:
------------------------
458986,60,Inceptisols
458986,25,Mollisols
------------------------

2) For a given key, it is not alway clear which class is dominant, as 
some simple addition needs to be done in order to calculate the dominant 
class
------------------------
458987,30,Inceptisols
458987,30,Inceptisols
458987,20,Mollisols
------------------------

For the first instance the dominant class could easily be extracted by 
sorting the records, but the second instance requires some addition and 
comparison... As the data is often more like the second instance, a 
generalized addition and comparison of classes for each unique key would 
be ideal.

I am wondering what the best tool for doing this would be... I would 
like to keep the operation done with a minimal set of tools (i.e. bash 
and awk, python, perl) ... but unfortunatley I have not been able to get 
the program logic with bash quite right (i am more used to C style 
languages...)

I know this is a littlew vague but any ideas on how to aggregate the 
various classes, and then compare them would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Dylan