I have the following data structure that I'm effectively treating as an ordered hash. I realize that I could use Tie::IxHash, but for various reasons (see below) I don't want to do that.

my $spec = {
    'Parameters' => [
        'shipmentIncrementId' => {
            'required' => 1,
            'type' => 'string',
        },  
        'carrier' => {
            'required' => 1,
            'type' => 'ups|usps|dhl|fedex|dhlint|custom',
        },  
        'title' => {
            'required' => 1,
            'type' => 'string',
        },  
        'trackNumber' => {
            'required' => 1,
            'type' => 'string',
        },  
    ],  
    'Response' => 'scalar',
};

[download]

I'm iterating over the keys like so:

my @params = $thing->{'Parameters'};

for my $index (0..$#params) {
  next if $index % 2 != 0;
  my $parameter = $params[$index];
  my $spec = $params[$index + 1];
  # do something from here...
}

[download]

Is there a more elegant way of doing that?

As to why I'm not doing Tie::IxHash: I'm using this to specify dynamic methods like so:

define_method 'foo' => {
  'Parameters' => [
    'bar' => {
      'required => 1,
      'type' => 'string',
    },
    'baz' => {
      'required => 1,
      'type' => 'string',
    },
  ]
};

[download]

Note that the application requires the arguments to be in order. I'm not sure how I'd use Tie::IxHash in that situation.

In reply to More elegant way of doing "ordered hash"? by PopeFelix

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