my @array;
my %hash = ( 1,2,3,4 );
push @array, \%hash;
push @array, {
  another => one => yeah => 1,
};
use Data::Dumper;
print $array[1]->{another}, " bites the dust\n\n";

die  Dumper \@array;
__END__
one bites the dust

$VAR1 = [
          {
            '1' => 2,
            '3' => 4
          },
          {
            'another' => 'one',
            'yeah' => 1
          }
        ];
[download]

Getting Started with Perl    (Top)

• The Basics
• The basic datatypes, three
• Variable Scoping in Perl: the basics by arturo
• Operators: arithmetic and otherwise

• Basic Input and Output (Exercises)

• What is True and False in Perl?
• Control Statements and Looping (Exercises)
• Statements: if, unless, while loops, and until
• Loops: do while, do until, for, and foreach

• File Input and Output (Exercises)

• String matching and Regular Expressions (Exercises)
• Regular Expression Quantifiers
  
• Character Class Abbreviations
• Pattern-Matching Examples
• Split and Join
• Other Basics
• Common Beginner Mistakes by chromatic
• Complex Sorting
• Hash Keys (strings or numbers?) by robot_tourist
• POD in 5 minutes by Juerd
• References by busunsl
• References quick reference by tye
• Use strict and warnings by runrig
• Working with other processes and programs

MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"

I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).

** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

I noticed you mention having read "some docs", but take a look at perldsc (particularly the section the link points to on the Declaration of, and accessing of Arrays of Hashes.), if you haven't already done so. (and there is nothing embarrasing about posting some code so we know what you have already tried.) Also perlreftut should prove helpful as well.

-enlil

Thanks Enlil, that was very helpful. Turns out what I was looking for was a hash of hashes. Here's the code I came up with:

#! c:\perl\bin

use strict;
use warnings;

my @temp=();
my %HoH=();

while(<>){
    (/^Title/) and next;
    chomp;
    @temp=split/\t/;
    $HoH{$temp[0]}{file}=$temp[1];
    $HoH{$temp[0]}{offset}=$temp[2];
    }
[download]

-----------------------------------

Any comments about coding style are welcome.

Since you invited comments, I would replace the @temp array with scalars, and use them thus:

    my ($title,$file,$offset) =split/\t/;
    $HoH{$title}{file}=$file;
    $HoH{$title}{offset}=$offset;
[download]

To improve it marginally (although, newbies may find this more confusing), the exact equivalent code is:

    my ($title,$file,$offset) =split/\t/;
    $HoH{$title}={file=>$file, 
                  offset=>$offset};
[download]

Just read the file and grab and process the line only if it matches the title:

while(<FILE>){
  if(/^$title/){
    (undef,$file,$offset) = split('\t');
    last;
  }
}
[download]

I mean, you only need the HoH or HoA or whatever if you want to keep the file in memory and do stuff more than once, right? Or am I missing something?

($_='kkvvttuubbooppuuiiffssqqffssmmiibbddllffss')
 =~y~b-v~a-z~s;                             print
[download]

Yes, but I'm doing it 6,000 times so I thought it would be more efficient to have a hash lookup instead of looping through the file 6,000 times.

-----------------------------------

Any comments about coding style are welcome.

Aha, that certainly comes under the heading of "am I missing something", yes. Of course it's better that way. Mind you even better (going completely the other way) would be to dump it into a simple tied-hash database of some kind. That way you'd have it on disk for later if you wanted to do other things to it. I'd just use dbm if it was me.

---




($_='kkvvttuubbooppuuiiffssqqffssmmiibbddllffss')
 =~y~b-v~a-z~s;                             print
[download]

Un-Tested

open(IN, "<file") or die "failed: $!";

while(<IN>)
{
  chomp;
  my ($title, $file, $offset ) = split(/\t/, $_);
  $offsets{$title} = $offset;
  $files{$title} = $file;
}
[download]

2 separate hashes. This is assuming that $title is unique.

To use:

$title = 'somethng interesting';
$offset = $offsets{$title};
$file = $files{$title};
[download]