Re-post: hashes frustration

I am currently reading about the Perl DBI module, and the first chapter explained about the Berkley DB_File and tieing hashes to a file. I followed the example from the book and succesfully got it working. However I then wrote a method that would return a particular part of a string thus (main parts of code)

my $db = tie %database, 'DB_File', "simpleinsert.dat",O_CREAT | O_RDWR
+, 0666 or die "Cannot initialise database";

$database{'anthony1'}=new contacts_db('anthony',
                                     'ant@hot',
                                     '14 road',
                                     '102892',
                                     '34567')->pack();
[download]

I can then access the name by

my $person = new contacts_db($database{'anthony1'});
$person->unpack_name();
[download]

this then returns 'anthony'.

but if i put

$database{'anthony1'}->unpack_name();
[download]

nothing is brought back, why??????????

--
Casey
   I am a superhero.

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RE: Re-post: hashes frustration by Perlmage (Acolyte) on Sep 14, 2000 at 18:23 UTC
You're not putting an object in the hash, so you can't call a method on it later. What you're actually doing is calling a class method on the package that corresponds to whatever pack() returns. The first form works because you are re-blessing the packed version into the class that contains the unpack_name() method. I'm not sure why the second form works at all without resulting in an error, actually. There are modules on the CPAN that will let you tie() a hash to a database and then store and fetch references (including blessed ones) from them, or you could roll your own with Storable or FreezeThaw or the like.	[reply]
RE: Re-post: hashes frustration by cwest (Friar) on Sep 14, 2000 at 17:42 UTC
I haven't used DB_Files but this is my guess: try: `(contacts_db($database->{anthony1}))->unpack_name()` [download] Since contacts_db() returns a reference for you to unpack_name() with, you can simplify this into one statement like the above. It's untested, but I'm 74.2% sure it will work. -- Casey I am a superhero.	[reply] [d/l]