Personally, I tend to use parallel hashes, ...

If two data structures are related, make that relationship OBVIOUS. Parallel data structures are not obviously related. In fact, it's a maintenance nightmare.

Let's set up a thought experiment. There are four parallel data structures. It doesn't matter at all what they are, except they have the following properties:

I am your maintenance programmer. I come along and are told there is a bug in the fubar() function and I need to fix it in 24 hrs. I go and realize that I need this value to make it right. I don't know that the value is in this fourth data structure. But, I need to fix fubar() right now. So, I add some crazy structure to get that fourth value into fubar(). The code is now worse.

All of that is avoided by using a second level of data structures. Thus, this set of config-type parameters is handled around as one reference. I, the hapless maintainer, is shown by the very way the data is structured that my needed value is there for me already. I don't need to hack the code up and make my job harder, just to do my job.

(And, in case you're thinking that this is a contrived thought experiment ... maintenance programmers are often given that exact task, with about that level of knowledge about the system. It's not a perfect world out there. It is our job as developers to think about the maintainer who will come after us. You will maintain at some point in your career and will thank the developer with forethought.)

(If you think your code won't be maintained, remember this - that's what the mainframe developers in the 1970's thought when they used 2-digit years. I mean, who's going to keep this code around for 30(!) years?)

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

In reply to Parallel structures are NOT maintainable by dragonchild
in thread using references as keys in a hash. by habit_forming

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