Hi,

I have a pretty complicated (for me anyway) hash setup as shown in the example snippet below:

my %hash = ( 'A1' => { 
                               'B1' => 'Value',
                               'B2' => { 
                                        'C1' => [arrayitem1, 
                                                 arrayitem2,
                                                 arrayitem3,],

                                        'C2' => [arrayitem1, 
                                                 arrayitem2,
                                                 arrayitem3,],
                                       }
                              },
                     )

[download]

What I want to do is check whether C1 or C2 exists. If it exists, I want to add another item to its array. If C1 or C2 does not exist, I want to create it as an array reference and add an item to its array.

At the moment my code looks something like this:

if (exists $hash{'A1'}{'B2'}{'C1'}) {
    push ( @{ $hash{'A1'}{'B2'}{'C1'}}, arrayitem4;
} else {
    $hash{'A1'}{'B2'} = {'C1' => [arrayitem1]};
}

[download]

The code doesn't work as I get various "Can't use string ("") as a HASH ref while "strict refs" in use" errors. I am getting very confused with all of the searching I have done to find the answer so would really appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction.

The aim is that B2 would be a 'Test Results' key. The 'C' keys would refer to dates and then the arrays within them would be the data of the results (single line sentences) for that dates tests

In reply to How to add to hash of a hash of an array. Confused.com! by Doozer

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