in reply to Re: Birthday List
in thread Birthday List

open(IN, $db_file) || die "Cannot read '$db_file': $!\n";
my %birthdays = map { chomp; split ':' } <IN>;
close IN;

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It took me looking back through my book to understand exactly how that works;however, I still have one question about that. I want to create a key that's not the name or the birthday. I'm aware of people with the exact same name so having their names being the key to access them by would be a bad thing. Now, I'm not into accessing an actual database yet but from what I'm aware of through using PHP, an array of associative arrays would help to solve the problem of creating the extra key. Unfortunately oh great one, I'm not sure that I comprehend doing this in Perl.
"I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High." - Psalms 82:6

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Re3: Birthday List
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Sep 01, 2003 at 19:19 UTC
    You're right - same names can cause a problem and having a unique id would solve it. What you end up having to do is have the key of the associative array (also known as a hash) be the unique ID (which doesn't necessarily have to be a number, though usually is) and the value be a reference to the data structure for that unique id.

    However, like all solutions, I would make sure that you actually have the problem before implementing a solution that causes your code to become more complex. If you had two Jim Jones, I'd make sure to change it to Jim A. Jones and Jim B. Jones. Remember, you have to relate this back to your own life. So, something like "Jim Jones (college)" and "Jim Jones (work)" can also be used without having to change the code. :-)

    ------
    We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

    The idea is a little like C++ templates, except not quite so brain-meltingly complicated. -- TheDamian, Exegesis 6

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

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