Most humble sages,

I am working with some scripts I've inherited. Currently, multiple files are opened and certain field values are placed into a hash like so: 

%hash_of_a_field{$the_record_value} = 1;

[download]


Later on the these are checked by using defined; This works fine. My question is geared toward a design / self-documenting approach.

Although this method works, would it not be better to set the key (no value) and use exists? Are both methods one in the same? I've thought of pushing the fields into an array, but I assume that using defined or exists is quicker than running a grep on the entire array?

Thank you for your advice :)

In reply to Hashing it out: defined? exists? by eff_i_g

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