The data structure that you use depends, in part, on what you are trying to accomplish. However, from your writeup, it seems that you have several different users/entities with basically the same information describing them. I assume the program then performs a set of standard operations on the data about these users/entitites one user at a time.

Given that, I would store the info about these users in a HoH or AoH. This data structure gives you the ability to access data about the users dynamically. Once a user is determined, you can store a reference to that users data structure into a generic hash and use that reference throughout the rest of the program. That way you don't have to try and code references to specific users elsewhere in the program.

my %users = (
        george => {
            total_money => "42",
            max_money   => "100"
        },
        lindsay => {
            total_money => "125",
            max_money   => "1000"
        },
};

my $userref = \$users{$userid};

# the rest of the program accesses $userref specifically ...

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PJ
unspoken but ever present -- use strict; use warnings; use diagnostics; (if needed)

In reply to Re: Dynamic variables by periapt
in thread Dynamic variables by xspikx

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