I have various items stored in a hash with the price as the key:
my %ITEMS = (
29.95 => 'item 1',
38.55 => 'item 2',
45.20 => 'item 3', # Oh oh!
58.29 => 'item 4',
);
If you must know, the "items" are really subscription orders for a magazine, so there is no chance that two "items" would have the same price.
The problem comes when you want to access the hash.
print $_, "\n" foreach (keys %ITEMS);
__OUTPUT__
58.29
38.55
45.2
29.95
When accessed in numeric context, the '45.20' key drops the trailing zero, but keeps it in string context. The solution I came up with was to have two entries pointing to the same string, one in numeric context and the other in string:
my %ITEMS = (
29.95 => 'item 1',
38.55 => 'item 2',
"45.20" => 'item 3', # String
45.2 => 'item 3', # Number
58.29 => 'item 4',
);
print $_, "\n" foreach (keys %ITEMS);
__OUTPUT__
58.29
38.55
45.2
45.20
29.95
This solution forces you to update two hardcoded hash keys with identicial data.
Does anybody see a cleaner solution?
----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer
Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated
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