in reply to Application Deployment With Perl

MrChromeDome, if you wanted to go the XML route instead of an ini file I'd take a peek at XML::Simple. You could replace your ini file with this: 
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Config>
   <Assessor>1.5.499</Assessor>
   <LOCAL_PATH>d:\pb8\</LOCAL_PATH>
   <SYSTEMS>Assessor,Treasurer</SYSTEMS>
   <Treasurer>1.5.200</Treasurer>
   <ZIP_PATH>p:\</ZIP_PATH>
</Config>

[download]
Then in your read_ini subroutine, parse the XML: 
sub read_ini {
   my $config_file = shift;

   my $parser  = XML::Simple->new;
   my $results = $parser->XMLin($config_file);
   # $results is a hash reference
   return $results;
}

[download]
You'll have to take into account the fact that read_ini will now be returning a hash reference instead of a plain hash: 
my $config = read_ini("AppDeployment.xml");

[download]
And then... 
my $apps = $config->{SYSTEMS};

[download]
Hope that helped.

Update: fixed typo, thanks buttroast.

-- vek --

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Application Deployment With Perl
by MrCromeDome (Deacon) on Apr 03, 2003 at 19:52 UTC
    Is it possible, for example, to do something like this: 
    <?xml version="1.0"?>
<Config>
   <LOCAL_PATH>d:\pb8\</LOCAL_PATH>
   <ZIP_PATH>p:\</ZIP_PATH>
   <SYSTEMS>
     <Assessor>1.5.499</Assessor>
     <Treasurer>1.5.200</Treasurer>
   </SYSTEMS>
</Config>

    [download]
    If I'm thinking of it right, I could see that I have a list of systems, and if I delve into the systems I could find various properties of them, such as version, etc.?

    Thanks for the info :) Very informative :)
    MrCromeDome

[reply]
[d/l]
      Yep it's entirely possible to do what you suggest. Here's the data structure that XML::Simple would create (results dumped via Data::Dumper): 
      $VAR1 = {
          'ZIP_PATH' => 'p:\\',
          'LOCAL_PATH' => 'd:\\pb8\\',
          'SYSTEMS' => {
                         'Treasurer' => '1.5.200',
                         'Assessor' => '1.5.499'
                       }
        };

      [download]
      And then: 
      my $config = read_ini("AppDeployment.xml");
my $assessor_version = $config->{SYSTEMS}->{Assessor};

      [download]
      -- vek --
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: Re: Application Deployment With Perl
by buttroast (Scribe) on Apr 12, 2003 at 02:10 UTC
    vek, I tried to use your XML read_ini sub on a WIN32 but it choked on XMLIn. Changed it to XMLin and it worked fine.
[reply]
      buttroast, cheers, it was a typo and should have been XMLin

      -- vek --
[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Cool Uses for Perl