Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that this would be a good Perl intepreter flag... i.e., that all associate array keys should be treated case-insensitively. The interpreter would implicitly run "lc" when computing the hash value for storing or retrieving a value.

The background here, as I alluded to above, is that I've got about 20,000 lines of code for a web system. Alot of my application is database-driven, and I have a module that just contains functions to retrieve rows from numerous tables.

The mechanism for returning data from the retrieve functions is a pointer to a hash table (of the returned row). The keys in the hash are case-sensitive names of the fields. So the risk here is that someone who maintains this code makes a change and typos a hash key. Unlike with using strict vars, where Perl warns you if it thinks you've made a typo in a variable name, it would be very difficult to track down a typo in a hash key.

Any other thoughts?

thanks
MFN

In reply to Re^2: case-insensitive hash keys by ManFromNeptune
in thread case-insensitive hash keys by ManFromNeptune

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.