If you don't plan to reuse this code, just put it in, in-line. No packaging worries, nice and simple. Once you have the data structure, the rest of the code just diddles with it.
You could make it nicer by turning it into a subroutine, like this:
sub read_it_and_construct {
# Arguments are in the @_ array here
my ($filename) = @_;
# Create variables for this function only using "my"
my $DATA;
# Open the file and read it
open (INPUT, $filename) or die "Can't open $filename: $!\n";
# ... your code here, which builds the structure ...
# (don't forget to use 'my' on any other variables you
# use in here! Otherwise, they're global and can clobber
# like-named variables in the main program!)
# Pass the structure back to the caller
return $data;
}
The main program would simply say:
my $structure = read_it_and_construct($from_this_filename);The subroutine gets the file to read as its argument, and returns the structure as its value.
If you want to make it really black-box, you can go object-oriented; I can talk to you about that if you like. Essentially, you write some more subroutines that know how to access the data structure, and return (to the caller) a special kind of reference that knows about these functions, so you can do stuff like
my $filetree = ReadAndConstruct->new($file); my $value = $filetree->lookup($key1,$key2,$key3);and so on. Let me know if this sounds useful for you. I'd recommend it only if you plan to use the tree builder in a number of programs.
In reply to RE: the Magic Box system? (use require)
by pemungkah
in thread the Magic Box system? (use require)
by Buckaroo Buddha
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