Actually, perl has a built-in facility for this... if you simply say: 
$hash{$coord1,$coord2} = $value;

[download]
then perl automatically constructs a hash key as: 
$key = join($;, ($coord1, $coord2));

[download]
using $;, the "subscript separator" perl variable. The default value of which is octal 034, the control character "field separator". This isn't quite a perfect solution if your variables can store arbitrary binary data... but, in general, you're pretty safe against occurences of this character occuring in your data. You can perldoc perlvar for more details.

------------
:Wq
Not an editor command: Wq

In reply to Re: Re: Hashing multiple items by etcshadow
in thread Hashing multiple items by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.