This one is probably something really simple, but I can't seem to quite get my head around it.

I've got a form and I'd like to have some of the fields be required.

I'm using CGI.pm and maping all the form variables into a namespace called Beta.

I was going to try something like this:

($errorcodes .= "<li>First Name")       if !($Beta::FirstName);
($errorcodes .= "<li>Last Name")        if !($Beta::LastName);
($errorcodes .= "<li>Email Address")    if !($Beta::Email);

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When I thought, gee, a hash might be good for this. So I tried:

my ($key, $value);
my %required = {
        FirstName       => 'First Name',
        LastName        => 'Last Name',
        Email           => 'Email'
};
while ( ($key, $value) = each %required) {
        ($errorcodes .= "<li>$value")   if !($page->param("$key"));
}

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I had to move out of the $Beta:: namespace, because it didn't like $Beta::$key.

Anyway, I also traced $key = $value, and it's giving me HASH(0x1012b848) =

So obviously I'm getting references instead of values. But I'm new to hashes, and I'm not sure where to go from here.

Any suggestions?

In reply to Simple Hash Q. by cei

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