I'm working on a script to read a list of MS DevStudio .dsw files and generate a list of projects to compile. The list has to be ordered for dependancies which means that I need to read all the data before writing my list, and that I need to get several things for each project: dsw filename(and path), project name, dsp filename (and path), and dependancies. I wrote most of this with some success, using hashes to store my data and a recursive algorithm to resolve dependancies. But I didn't want to rebuild projects, so I had code in their to try and weed out repeats. The repeat weeding is also important when resolving dependancies. (Otherwise it will take a century to converge). Alas, some of the repeats have different ideas on what they are dependant on, meaning I need to get the dependancy list for every repeat when I'm reading the files. This script bombed for a variety of reasons, most of which are related to a poor data model for storing all that data.

Does anyone have a good way to store lots of data like that? (short of taking an object oriented approach... I'm trying to keep this simple and straight forward) Once I figure out a better way to represent everything I am confident that I can generate a better script to do this then the one I have now.

In reply to Data Structs by Adam

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.