There's a much better way to do that. Use hashes. That's the canonical way to associate a string (like a column name) with a number (like a column number). :-)

Of course, this isn't a reason not to learn modules. You should do that because it's the next step.

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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.