Hi Bioinfocoder,

It looks like your file is basically an ini-style file with sections, keys and values, with the addition of the "nice name" subsection labels.

I would remove the "subsection" labels, which are really part of your presentation, and put them in a hash keyed by the real config names for lookup and use when needed. Then I would use Config::Tiny::Ordered to read from and write to the file.

Edit: Since you say "The order of First_Name, Last_Name and Age within each location can change and even order of locations can change, but each location section should remain separate and intact" you could just use Config::Tiny which is a little easier to work with since you use named hash keys rather than array indices to work with the config settings.

Hope this helps!


The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

In reply to Re: Read an input file in two hashes to retain order by 1nickt
in thread Read an input file in two hashes to retain order by Bioinfocoder

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.