Thanks for the reply, I think you might have a point ;-) I kinda thought that mid-way through coding...

The main problem is that I am getting values from a database. The table looks like this:

id,name,description,parent_id
[download]

Of course I could change this table structure, but I thought it should hold all the values ok. I am then reading from the database like so:

sub getCategories() {
  my ($dbh)=@_;
  
  my $sth=$dbh->prepare("SELECT categories.id,
                                categories.name,
                                categories.description,
                                categories.parent_id
                                FROM categories");

  $sth->execute();

  my %cat_hash;

  while (my $cat_hashref = $sth->fetchrow_hashref()) {
    if ($cat_hashref->{parent_id}) {
      $cat_hash{$cat_hashref->{id}}{$cat_hashref->{parent_id}}{name}=$
+cat_hashref->{name};
      $cat_hash{$cat_hashref->{id}}{$cat_hashref->{parent_id}}{descrip
+tion}=$cat_hashref->{description};
      $cat_hash{$cat_hashref->{id}}{$cat_hashref->{parent_id}}{parent_
+id}=$cat_hashref->{parent_id};
    } else {
      $cat_hash{$cat_hashref->{id}}{0}{name}=$cat_hashref->{name};
      $cat_hash{$cat_hashref->{id}}{0}{description}=$cat_hashref->{des
+cription};
      $cat_hash{$category_hashref->{id}}{0}{parent_id}='0';
    }
  }
  
  $sth->finish();
  
  return %cat_hash;
}
[download]

Thanks for your help, I will check out the Tree modules, maybe then can shed some light on the situation for me.

Appreciate any comments people might have on the above code.

cheers,
Tom

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