Hash table of arrays

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

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Hash table of arrays by btrott (Parson) on Jul 05, 2000 at 21:47 UTC
I think what you're doing is looking up a particular user on a particular machine; and if that user doesn't exist on that machine, then you're adding that user to that machine list. Right? You should be using push to add the user to the array of users: `push @{ $machinearray{$machine} }, $pwline;` [download] This will add $pwline to the end of the array. You may want to think about alternate data structures, though, if you're going to be looking up a lot of users. Something like this, perhaps? `my %machines = ( machine1 => { user1 => 'pwline1', user2 => 'pwline2', }, machine2 => { user1 => 'pwline1', user3 => 'pwline3', }, );` [download] This way you can quickly look up a particular user on a particular machine, and you also have access to the password lines. Then you could do: `if (!exists $machines{$machine}{$uname}) { ## User doesn't exist. Add him/her. $machines{$machine}{$uname} = $pwline; }` [download] Make sense?	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Hash table of arrays by splinky (Hermit) on Jul 05, 2000 at 21:55 UTC
Looks like you have an extra ${} in there. But I'll do you one better and show you an easier way. `push @{$machinearray{$machine}}, $pwline;` You can also tighten up your grep a bit. If `$uname` contained "brad", for example, and your array contained "bradford", it would match your regex and fail to add "brad" to the array. The following is probably what you want: `if (!grep {$_ eq $uname} @{$machinearray{$machine}})` Enjoy! Woof	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Hash table of arrays by davorg (Chancellor) on Jul 05, 2000 at 23:35 UTC
I'd take a slightly different approach. If you stored your data as a hash of hashes, then the keys in the first hash could be the machine name and the values could be references to second level hashes. The key to these hashes would be the user names and the values would be an integer which is incremened each time to find a particular user on a particular machine. You could replace your code above with: `$machinearray{$machine}{$user}++;` [download] which would automatically creat sub-hashes as required. As a bonus, you could easily find if a particular user is on a particular machine using `if (exists $machinearray{$machine}{$user})` [download] and you could get a list of users on a particular machine using `keys %{$machinearray{$machine}};` [download] -- <http://www.dave.org.uk> European Perl Conference - Sept 22/24 2000, ICA, London <http://www.yapc.org/Europe/>	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Hash table of arrays by ZZamboni (Curate) on Jul 06, 2000 at 00:01 UTC
Apart from the other comments, using grep with user-supplied data as the pattern (as your $uname variable may be) is evil and should be avoided, because it opens the possibility to all sorts of mischief. What if $uname contains regular expression metacharacters? What if it contains one of the magic forms that allow you to execute arbitrary Perl code? I would also suggest using hashes for storing the user names. Makes your code a lot cleaner and makes it much easier to test whether a user is already there. For some related discussion, see the FAQ How can I tell whether a list or array contains a certain element? --ZZamboni	[reply]
Re: Hash table of arrays by Buckaroo Buddha (Scribe) on Jul 05, 2000 at 21:42 UTC
if you look in categorized Q&A under nested data structures you should find what you're looking for	[reply]
Re: Hash table of arrays by Anonymous Monk on Jul 06, 2000 at 02:08 UTC
Thank you teachers and fellow seekers. I meditated on what you said here and I have come up with: Push is good. I will remember it for the future. I have scrapped the grepping of lists thing and am implementing it as a hash table of hash tables as Davorg suggested. I don't understand Davorg's code, but mine works, even though I'm sure it's obviously written by a neophyte. Each response was thoughtful and informative. Thanks to you all.	[reply]
Re: Hash table of arrays by davorg (Chancellor) on Jul 06, 2000 at 11:57 UTC
If you need any help understanding my code, then please feel free to give me a shout. -- <http://www.dave.org.uk> European Perl Conference - Sept 22/24 2000, ICA, London <http://www.yapc.org/Europe/>	[reply]