I would definitely go with BrowserUK's idea. Since you are numbering anyway, an array is perfect for you. Basically, the "3.1" is only important because it comes after "2.*" and before "4.*", so there's really no reason to put it in a hash, but rather an array is good.

BrowserUK: Does your example have one to many levels of anonomous arrays? I would think it would more be something like

@structure = (
    { ... },
    [
        { ... },
        { ... },
    ],
    [
        { ... },
        { ... },
    ],
    [
        { ... },
        { ... },
    ],
);

[download]

That way you can do something like: 

my @structure = ( $hashref_from_first );
foreach @query {
  ...
  push @structure, []
  foreach @subquery {
     ...
     push @structure->[0], $hashref; 
  }
}

[download]

Or something like that (but probably a lot better)

    -Bryan

In reply to Re^2: Best complex structure? by mrborisguy
in thread Best complex structure? by Anonymous Monk

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