Fellow monks,

I've got a problem with some code that I am sure I am going to end up kicking myself over, but...

I've built two hash tables - one from a config file ( hash a ) and the other from web data ( hash b ). The information in the tables is being used to display a series of check boxes. If my config file does in fact exist, I want to use that data to pre-check the boxes I'm displaying, so I'm testing for the existence of a key in hash a using the key from hash b.

My problem is that it doesn't think the key exists ever in hash b. I have verified through print statements and debugging that both hashes are populated, and with the same data.

Here's my code: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use LWP::Simple;
use HTTP::Request::Common;

my @d;
my ($stream, $file);
my %list;
my %cfg;

$file = 'dave.cfg';

if ( -e $file ) {
    die "Failed: $! trying open existing $file\n" unless open FH, $fil
+e ;
    &getinfo;
    &buildhash;
    #&printboxes;
    &test;
    }
else {
      print "Didn't find file\n";
      die "Failed: $! trying to create new $file\n" unless open FH, '>
+'.$file;
      &buildhash;
      #&printboxes;
      }
sub buildhash{

# This procedure gets the web page with the links to the comics and bu
+ilds a
# hash table consisting of the name of the comic as the key and the UR
+L as the
# value.

# Get information from kingfeatures.com

    $stream = get('http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/comicsN
+av.htm');
    @d = split('\n',$stream);
    my $end = $#d-1;

# This information is taken from the side menu

    for my $count(0..$end){
        if ($d[$count] =~ m!name="(.+)"><a href="(.+)" target="_top"!i
+){
            $list{$1} = $2;
            }
        }

# Get information from comics.com

    $stream = get('http://www.comics.com/');
    @d = split('\n',$stream);
    $end = $#d-1;

# The information is taken from their drop down box menu

    for my $count(0..$end){

# This line can be uncommented if you want to include editorial comics
+ by artist
#        last if $d[$count] =~ m/editorial/i;
        if ($d[$count] =~ m!option\s+value="(.+)">(.+)</!i){
            $list{$2} = $1;
            }
        }
     } # end buildhash

sub getinfo{

    my $line;
    $cfg{$line}=1 while ($line = <FH>);
    close FH;
    }

sub test{
    my $key;
    foreach $key (keys %list){
            print "Value is $cfg{$key}\n" if exists $cfg{$key};
            }
    }

[download]

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling now.

In reply to Hash question - using value of one hash to determine existence in second hash by Popcorn Dave

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