I think you've rather shot yourself in the foot with that data structure. It really makes it difficult to access the second level categories that are children of a particular category.

Personally I'd use the flexibility of Perl data structures to my advantage and build a structure like this:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my %category_hash =
  (
   1 => {
         name => 'whatever',
         children => {
           2 => {
                 name => 'something',
                 children => {
                   3 => { name => 'another subcategory' }
                 }
                }
          }
         },
    4 => { name => 'something else' }
  );
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You can then display the structure with code like this:

show(\%category_hash, 0);

sub show {
  my ($hash, $lvl) = @_;

  my $prefix = '  ' x $lvl;

  foreach (sort keys %$hash) {
    print "$prefix$_ : $hash->{$_}{name}\n";
    show($hash->{$_}{children}, ++$lvl)
      if exists $hash->{$_}{children};
  }
}
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But you should also look at the Tree modules from CPAN.

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg

Thanks for the reply, I think you might have a point ;-) I kinda thought that mid-way through coding...

The main problem is that I am getting values from a database. The table looks like this:

id,name,description,parent_id
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Of course I could change this table structure, but I thought it should hold all the values ok. I am then reading from the database like so:

sub getCategories() {
  my ($dbh)=@_;
  
  my $sth=$dbh->prepare("SELECT categories.id,
                                categories.name,
                                categories.description,
                                categories.parent_id
                                FROM categories");

  $sth->execute();

  my %cat_hash;

  while (my $cat_hashref = $sth->fetchrow_hashref()) {
    if ($cat_hashref->{parent_id}) {
      $cat_hash{$cat_hashref->{id}}{$cat_hashref->{parent_id}}{name}=$
+cat_hashref->{name};
      $cat_hash{$cat_hashref->{id}}{$cat_hashref->{parent_id}}{descrip
+tion}=$cat_hashref->{description};
      $cat_hash{$cat_hashref->{id}}{$cat_hashref->{parent_id}}{parent_
+id}=$cat_hashref->{parent_id};
    } else {
      $cat_hash{$cat_hashref->{id}}{0}{name}=$cat_hashref->{name};
      $cat_hash{$cat_hashref->{id}}{0}{description}=$cat_hashref->{des
+cription};
      $cat_hash{$category_hashref->{id}}{0}{parent_id}='0';
    }
  }
  
  $sth->finish();
  
  return %cat_hash;
}
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Thanks for your help, I will check out the Tree modules, maybe then can shed some light on the situation for me.

Appreciate any comments people might have on the above code.

cheers,
Tom

OK, so lets see who we can build up a data structure like mine from your database. I'm going to read it from the DATA filehandle as I don't have time to set up a database, but the logic is just the same.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my %category_hash;
my %categories;

# Build a hash containing all of our data records...
while (<DATA>) {
  chomp;
  my %cat;
  @cat{'id','name','parent'} = split /,/;
  $categories{$cat{id}} = \%cat;
}

# ... and turn it into a tree
foreach $_ (keys %categories) {
  if ($categories{$_}{parent}) {
    $categories{$categories{$_}{parent}}{children}{$_} =
      $categories{$_};
  } else {
    $category_hash{$_} = $categories{$_};
  }
}

# And now %category_hash is exactly the same as it was
# in my previous post. Carry on with "show" as before.

__DATA__
1,whatever,0
2,something,1
3,another subcategory,2
4,something else,0
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--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg

Hm, it seems like you're actually trying to code a tree, so I think life would be easier if you simply did it that way.

There are several tree modules on CPAN, and I can recommend Tree::MultiNode which is pretty complete, flexible and easy to use.

Hope this helps, -gjb-

Yeah thanks that is what I am trying to do, I will check out the module.

Also found code and adapted to create this:

  foreach my $key1 (keys %category_hash) {
    foreach my $key2 (keys %{$category_hash{$key1}}) {
      if ($category_hash{$key1}{$key2}{name} eq '0') {
        $category_dropdown.="<p>$category_hash{$key1}{$key2}{name} Is 
+a top Level category</p>";
      } else {
        $category_dropdown.="<p>$category_hash{$key1}{$key2}{name} Is 
+a sub Level category</p>";
      }
    }
  }
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Take a look at the hash code here

for ( keys %category_hash ) {
   my $first_lvl = $category_hash{$_};
   print "$_\n";

   for ( keys %{ $first_lvl } ) {
      my $second_lvl = $first_lvl->{$_};
      print ' ' x 3 . "$_"\n";

      for ( keys %{ $second_lvl } ) {
         print ' ' x 6 . "$_ : $second_lvl->{$_}\n";
      }
   } # END for keys $first_lvl
}    # END for keys %category_hash
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