in reply to Non-fixed data in record

It looks like a plain old hash to me. The left column is all the keys and the right is their corresponding values. If there are lots of records like this one in one file, you might use an array of hashes, or you could just read them in and deal with them one at a time. It sounds like you need to read up on references a bit more to understand how to do nested data structures like an array of hashes.

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Re: Re: Non-fixed data in record
by brassmon_k (Sexton) on Aug 31, 2001 at 21:25 UTC
    That is very true,

    Everything else about PERL I pretty much get (atleast what I've seen so far) but hashes and arrays I realize are vital but I'm kind of sketchy maybe really lacking the knowledge on how to construct a more complicated version of a hash or an array. I can do the basics for them but it gets hard for me later on. Any good sources where I can read up. The camel books examples just don't hit home.

    The Brassmon_k
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      Advanced Perl Programming (the panther book) has an excellent chapter on implementing complex data structures. learning when to use what data structure will mostly come from experience though.

      anders pearson

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      The Perl man pages are a good source, and there's lots of info on this site as well. Try a search for "references."
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