Mirthful Monks,

I've been having a ball creating fun iterative structures in Template Toolkit templates - and then ran into this.

Users, identified by their user_type, last name (lname), and company, make selections numbered 1 to 6. They can make multiple selections. I receive their selections as a string:

$choices = ",1,2,3,4,5,6,";
[download]

For other purposes in the script, I build a hash-based data structure out of all of it:

$data{$user_type}{$user_company}{$user_lname}{'attribute'}
[download]

To store their choices, I split the string into an array, and store the array in a 'choice_list' attribute of that user:

$data{$user_type}{$user_company$}{$user_lname}{'choice_list'} = [ @spl
+it_list ];
[download]

And at one point I want to output a list of choices for each user, grouped by lname, then by company, then by user_type (hence the data structure).

Everything was going perfectly until I added the very last loop to iterate over the choices array:

Perl script snippets:

$choices = ",1,2,3,4,5,6,";

print "Perl script output - <br>choices list before regex = $choices\n
+";
#string cleanup
$choices =~ s/^,//;
$choices =~ s/,$//;
print "<br>choices list after regex = $choices\n";
@split_list = split(/,+/, $choices);
# debugging output to check split
for $i (0 .. $#pub_list) {
    print "<br>choice $i = $pub_list[$i]\n";
}

$data{$user_type}{$user_company$}{$user_lname}{'choice_list'} = [ @spl
+it_list ];

$vars = {
    data => \%data,
};
$template->process($template_file, $vars);
[download]

Template:

Template output - <br>Choices are:<br>
[% FOREACH type IN data.keys.sort %]
     [% FOREACH company IN data.$type.keys.sort %]
          [% FOREACH name IN data.$type.$company.keys.sort %]
               [% FOREACH choice IN data.$type.$company.$name.choice_l
+ist %]
                    [% data.$type.$company.$name.choice_list.$choice %
+]<br>
               [% END %]
          [% END %]
     [% END %]
[% END %]
[download]

Output:

Perl script output - 
<br>choices list before regex = ,1,2,3,4,5,6,
<br>choices list after regex = 1,2,3,4,5,6
<br>choice 0 = 1 
<br>choice 1 = 2 
<br>choice 2 = 3 
<br>choice 3 = 4 
<br>choice 4 = 5 
<br>choice 5 = 6 
Template output - 
<br>Choices are:<br>
2<br>
3<br>
4<br>
5<br>
6<br>
<br>
[download]

I have the right number of breaks in the output, but the choice numbers are shifted - the "1" is missing and there's an extra break after the 6. Is it something to do with the way that I'm referencing the array of choices?

Thanks.

Updated within 60 seconds of original posting, and before any replies, for typo in template loops

---

In reply to Iterating over hash of arrays in Template Toolkit by punch_card_don

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