in reply to Searching a database

You say database, but your example suggest that you mean hash. Let's assume you do indeed mean hash. So, you have a hash, and are looking for the key/value pair, where the value is one of "with", "this", "please". I'd do something like: 
    my @matches = qw /with this please/;
  OUTER:
    while (my ($key, $value) = each %hash) {
        foreach my $match (@matches) {
            if ($match eq $value) {
                print "$key: $value";
                last OUTER;
            }
        }
    }

[download]

Or you could make a regex and match against the regex.

Abigail

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Re: Re: Searching a database
by Anonymous Monk on Sep 12, 2003 at 09:01 UTC
    That would work except what I'm searching for is a group of numbers but there will be a few sets of numbers in one value. Is there a way to iterate over each key/value in the hash, split them on :: then test existance?

    Thanks.

[reply]
          my %matches = map {$_ => 1} 17, 83, 114, 205, 407;
  OUTER:
    while (my ($key, $value) = each %hash) {
        foreach my $num (split /::/ => $value) {
            if ($matches {$value}) {
                print "$key: $value\n";
                last OUTER;
            }
         }
     }

      [download]

      Abigail

[reply]
[d/l]
        I've been doing Perl for about 5 years, and I'm *NO* expert, but I have to say that to me that is at least somewhat obfuscated code. I have no problem with the while, but the foreach: 
            foreach my $num (split /::/ => $value) {

        [download]
        mystifies me - what is the split splitting? When split isn't given an arg to split, it splits $_, but what is $_ in this case, since the while loop gets $key and $value?

        IMHO, more straightforward code, albeit sometimes longer code, is better: 
          my %matches = map {$_ => 1} 17, 83, 114, 205, 407;  
  while (my ($key, $value) = each %hash) {
    my @value_tokens = split /::/, $value;
    foreach my $value_token (@value_tokens) {
      if ($matches{$value_token}) {
         print "$key: $value\n";
         $found = 1;
         last; ### break out of foreach
      }
    } ### end foreach
    if $found:
      next;
    }
  } ### end while

        [download]
        I'm not entirely sure I understand the original intent, so this solution may need some work.

        HTH.
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