You've been shown some pretty high-tech solutions. But I think this would do what you want in a much simpler way:

In a file named "shared-hash.dat": 

my %hash = (
    '000001' => 'ITEM _First',
    '000002' => 'Item B',
    '000003' => 'House',
    '000004' => 'Service C',
    '000005' => 'Service X',
    '000006' => 'Service Z',
    '00007b' => 'Adjust Area',
    '020902' => 'Campus',
    '0sdc45' => 'Unit C',
    '000011' => 'Unit B',
    '0wed45' => 'Lower Level',
    '0ws456' => 'Cars',
    '02100m' => 'Numbers'
);

[download]
Now all you need to do in each program to get the data: 
my %hash = do "shared-hash.dat";

[download]
All changes to the structure are made in one place: shared-hash.dat, in plain Perl syntax. For more info, see `perldoc -f do`. Of course, you're executing arbitrary Perl code, so make sure not just anyone can write to that datafile.

If you need the programs to write back to the hash (and have those changes shared), you will have to do something a little more involved, but it didn't sound like that was the case from your description.

blokhead

In reply to Re: Hash Question by blokhead
in thread Hash Question by Anonymous Monk

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