Okay Monks, this is going to be a pretty lame question for most of you.

What I want to do is read in a complete line of a file into a hash and then use elements of that hash where I want. Example:
#!/usr/bin/perl

my %ACCTS = ();

open(IN, "< myfile") || die "Help!\n";

while (<IN>) {

($id, $name, $street, $city, $zip, $phone, $start_dt) = split(/\|\|/, 
+$_);

$ACCTS{$name}{$street}{$city}{$zip}{$phone}{$start_dt}=$id;

}

close IN;

[download]
If I reference a foreach $key statement, I can display my id's quite nicely. But if I try to display the rest, I get some output like 13423 - HASH(0x11d4a4). What I want is to use each element in Hash when I want to. Display NAME, PHONE if I wanted to, or NAME, ADDRESS if I wanted to.

How can I do that, or is an ARRAY just the best option?

Thanks!
Louis

In reply to How to use hashes well by cosmicsoup

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