VinsWorldcom has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

UPDATE

I was so focused on an ordered hash, I didn't read the JSON::PP perldoc to see canonical() gives me what I want and due to the names of my hash keys, alphabetical works just fine. Thank you choroba for the quick response in Re: Predictable repeatable hash order in CORE.

Original node follows:

I see Tie::IxHash is not in core, but Tie::Hash is - which is the base class Tie::IxHash uses to create ordered hashes. Is there a way to get ordered hashes (predictable, repeatable order when printed for example) in CORE - other than rolling my own Tie::Hash extension (cause if I'm going that route, I might as well just install Tie::IxHash)?

Background (in case you're interested):

The background is I'm working with Python and non-developers using Linux so they'll have Perl installed but I can't count on them to install modules outside of CORE. We're using JSON objects for example, so I "use JSON::PP" since JSON.pm isn't in CORE. When I do a encode_json(\%hash), I'd like for the output to be predictable, repeatable order so the non-developers looking at a print ... output see everything nicely in order (the developers don't care, they can just take the JSON string into their Python scripts and parse away). So creating the %hash is pretty simple, no delete, insert, reorder ... the overhead from Tie::IxHash .. I just need to create a hash:

%hash = (
   item1 => value,
   item2 => value,
);

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that can be predictable, repeatable order when output.

I've tested my code with Tie::IxHash and it works fine, so I may have to bite the bullet and teach a "even you can install Perl modules" course for my co-workers.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Predictable repeatable hash order in CORE
by choroba (Cardinal) on Sep 18, 2018 at 14:14 UTC
    Ordered keys in a JSON hash? Use canonical: 
    use warnings;
use strict;
use feature qw{ say };

use JSON::PP;

my $j = JSON::PP->new->canonical;
say $j->encode({abc => 12, def => 13});

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    ($q=q:Sq=~/;[c](.)(.)/;chr(-||-|5+lengthSq)`"S|oS2"`map{chr |+ord
}map{substrSq`S_+|`|}3E|-|`7**2-3:)=~y+S|`+$1,++print+eval$q,q,a,

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Re: SOLVED: Predictable repeatable hash order in CORE
by Laurent_R (Canon) on Sep 18, 2018 at 15:46 UTC
    It might be sufficient to sort the keys (or possibly the values, depending on your needs) when you want to print out the hash content. Perhaps something like this: 
    say "$_ => $hash{$_}" for sort keys %hash;

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Re: SOLVED: Predictable repeatable hash order in CORE
by swl (Prior) on Sep 18, 2018 at 21:41 UTC

    Just a data point, but for cases where installation from CPAN is possible there is also Hash::Ordered.

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