Stuff like this just cries for recursion. Have a look at this: 
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my $DATA;

while(<DATA>) 
{
        chomp;
        my ($one, $two, $three, $four) = split /\:/, $_;
        push @{$DATA->{$one}{$two}{$three}}, $four;
}

print "#", &choice ($DATA), "#";

sub choice 
{
    my $structure = shift;

    my %menu;
    my $x = 0;
    
    if ( ref($structure) eq "HASH" )
    {
        %menu = map { $x++ => $_ } sort keys %{$structure};
       
    }
    elsif ( ref($structure) eq "ARRAY" )
    {
        %menu = map { $_ => $structure->[$_] } (0..@{$structure}-1);
    }
    else 
    {
        return $structure;
    }
        
    print map { "$_ - $menu{$_}\n" } sort keys %menu;

    print "select : ";
    chomp(my $a = <STDIN>);
        
    return choice (ref($structure) eq "HASH" ? $structure->{$menu{$a}}
+ : $structure->[$menu{$a}]);  
}
__DATA__
category1:category2:category3:options
categorya:categoryb:categoryc:more options
categoryd:categorye:categoryf:even more options

[download]
This has several favours: better maintainability, easier to read (imho), supports n level depth and multiple "menus" since you pass the data structure into the function.


holli, /regexed monk/

In reply to Re: Parsing through a menu hash. by holli
in thread Parsing through a menu hash. by yoda54

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