jeffa++ for using CGI and presenting the right way to go about it. Just to point out however, jeffa's actual code will not work as you might hope. It took me a second to see why he was using map{} to pass the values. Then I realized that the hash was reversed in the way CGI likes to receive it. So the map works correctly. But unfortunately, CGI is not smart enough to take \%fish for the labels and flip the hash around to get the values right.

There are two ways (that I know of) to go about fixing this. I will post both solutions. (As well, I'm hoping jeffa would plan on calling header() before start_html() :) ) First method of getting it done: attach a map{} to the passing of -labels as well. So you get the following: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI::Pretty qw(:standard);

my %fish = (
   "Fresh water fish"        => "fish1.jpg",
   "Salt water fish"         => "fish2.jpg",
   "One fish"                => "seuss1.jpg",
   "Two fish"                => "seuss2.jpg",
   "Thanks for all the fish" => "adams.jpg",
);

print header(), start_form(),
   popup_menu(
      -name   => 'fish',
      -values => [map { $fish{$_} } sort keys %fish],
      -labels => {map { $fish{$_}, $_ } sort keys %fish}
   ),
   end_form();

[download]

The second way to get it done will make things much easier and will make it a little more readable. Simply flip the keys and values in the hash around and then the calls to popup_menu() will be quite simple: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI::Pretty qw(:standard);

my %fish = (
  'fish1.jpg'  => 'Fresh water fish',
  'fish2.jpg'  => 'Salt water fish',
  'seuss1.jpg' => 'One fish',
  'seuss2.jpg' => 'Two fish',
  'adams.jpg'  => 'Thanks for all the fish'
);
print header(), start_form(),
   popup_menu(
      -name   => 'fish',
      -values => [sort keys %fish],
      -labels => \%fish
   ),
   end_form();

[download]

And from the above two snippets, there should really only be one difference: the first one will sort based on the user-viewed values (ie: 'Thanks for all the fish'), whereas the second snippet sorts based on the actual field values (ie: 'adams.jpg'). 

      C:\>shutdown -s
      >> Could not shut down computer:
      >> Microsoft is logged in remotely.

In reply to Re^3: Drop-down list Option Value by Coruscate
in thread Drop-down list Option Value by Happyjack

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