If you use the lookup a lot then it's worth making a lookup table. Consider

use strict; use warnings; my %upload = (1 => 'one', 2 => 'two', 3 => 'three', 5 => 'five', 9 => +'nine', 10 => 'ten'); my @keys = sort {$a <=> $b} keys %upload; my %lookup = map { $keys[$_] => { prev => $_ ? $keys[$_ - 1] : undef, next => $_ != $#keys ? $keys[$_ + 1] : undef, } } 0 .. $#keys; for my $key (1, 5, 10) { if (defined $lookup{$key}{next}) { print "$lookup{$key}{next} follows $key\n"; } else { print "$key is the last item\n"; } if (defined $lookup{$key}{prev}) { print "$lookup{$key}{prev} precedes $key\n"; } else { print "$key is the first item\n"; } }

Prints:

2 follows 1 1 is the first item 9 follows 5 3 precedes 5 10 is the last item 9 precedes 10

The lookup creation is a little more succinct if you make use of autovivification:

my %lookup = map {$keys[$_] => {prev => $keys[$_ - 1], next => $keys[$ +_ + 1]}} 0 .. $#keys;

Update: see johngg's reply below!


DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

In reply to Re: how to check which index $x is in an hash by GrandFather
in thread how to check which index $x is in an hash by Anonymous Monk

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.