Since you need to do these in order, I'd probably start with an array. Further, I like to try to make things flexible so that I can easily adjust the behavior in the future. The following quick hack will iterate over the clusters. It defines the total number of machines per cluster (in case they change), and if any machine in the cluster has a different behavior, allows you to assign a subref to that machine. In the future, you can change the number of machines and change the behavior for any machine for any cluster to anything you want. Further, the data structure is very intuitive. This should be simple to maintain.

Note how easy it is to change the behavior for the fourth cluster.

use strict;
use warnings;

my @clusters = (
    { total => 7,
      7     => \&two },
    { total => 7,
      7     => \&two },
    { total => 7,
      7     => \&two },
    { total => 16,
      7     => \&two,
      4     => \&three },
    { total => 7,
      7     => \&two },
    { total => 7,
      7     => \&two },
    { total => 7,
      7     => \&two } );

foreach my $cluster ( @clusters ) {
    # decrement count by one to account for arrays starting at zero
    my $machine_count = $cluster->{ total } - 1;
    for my $machine ( 0 .. $machine_count ) {
        if ( ! exists $cluster->{ $machine + 1 } ) {
            &one;
        } else {
            &{ $cluster->{ $machine + 1 } };
        }
    }
}

sub one {
    print "First sub\n";
}

sub two {
    print "Second sub\n";
}

sub three {
    print "Third sub\n";
}

[download]

You'll probably want to play with that for loop as the increments and decrements look weird, but it's a start.

Cheers,
Ovid

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In reply to (Ovid - plan for the future) Re: Data Structure Design by Ovid
in thread Data Structure Design by Tuna

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