That's not really a reference, that's a symbolic reference which is something a bit different. I hope you mean that you want to avoid symbolic references (which is entirely sensible) not that you want to avoid real references (which would be a bit silly).

The best way around your program would be to use a multi-level hash (called something like %people whic contains all of your data. It would look something like this:

my %people;
foreach my $person (@people) 
  foreach my $value (@dbmlist) {
     my %VAL;
     dbmopen(%VAL, $value);
     $people{$value}{$person} = $VAL{$person};
     dbmclose(%VAL);
   }
}

[download]

A couple of other points that might make your life easier:

  1. The "dbmopen" and "dbmclose" functions have been deprecated for some time. Try looking at "tie" instead.
  2. If you're storing all of the data in a sinlge hash called %people, why not store it all in a single DBM file using MLDBM.
--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg

In reply to Re: how to avoid a reference? by davorg
in thread how to avoid a reference? by Anonymous Monk

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