I dunno about turning to OO for any little hash problem.

I used to have nightmares with hashes starting out.
A couple of things that I started doing that I think helped me out..

If I am going to have a complex structure, I start out with an anon hash, and I stick to anonymous arrays and hashes.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $house = {
  name          => 'old bertha home',
  guests        => [ 'greg', 'thomax', 'zeimart', 'bubba' ],
  structure    => {
          rooms    => [ 'foyer', 'bathroom', 'front lawn', 'kitchen'],
          address => '121 super road, ny, ny 12866',
  },
};

for ( @{$house->{guests}} ) {
   print "$_ is in house: ".$house->{name};
   print " in the ". $house->{structure}->{rooms}->[ int(rand(3))] ."\
+n";
}

[download]

So, now you don't have to worry when passing references to function calls, if you pass it function(\%poppa); or function(\@poppa); etc.. it's always function($poppa); ... less typing too.

Also, name your hashes singular, always. name your arrays plural, always.

There's also the reasoning behind not doing this: $$house{structure}{address}
instead of this
$house->{structure}->{address}
And thank goodness that someone wrote a book about that kind of thing so I can go to sleep now.. my eyes.. ouch...

Seriously, try it out. Use anonymous scalars, it may be your salvation.

In reply to Re: Hashes of Arrays of Hashes (sometimes of Arrays) by leocharre
in thread Hashes of Arrays of Hashes (sometimes of Arrays) by Bro. Doug

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.