I would like to solve the following problem, which can be easily solved without strict refs, but don't want to go that route.

I capture a series of fields, as an example: 

    my($ip,$name,$proto,$email) =~ /^(\S*) (\S*) (\S*) (\S*)$/;

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and then use an auto-vivifying hash to act as a counter of the unique data set: 
    $userdata{$name}{$ip}{$proto}{$email}++;

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Clearly this allows tracking the number of times a given NAME was used, along with the various IPs, and for each of those PROTOs, and finally EMAILs.

But this has a built-in order. I'd like to be able to allow a user-configurable ordering of that data, for example: 

    @order = qw(ip name email proto)

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such that I could capture essentially as: 
    $userdata{$order[0]}{$order[1]}{$order[2]}{$[order[3]}++;
    # which I want to result in ...
    $userdata{$ip}{$name}{$email}{$proto}++;

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essentially changing the primary, secondary, etc. key orders. Creating the many combinatorics to suit all cases isn't an option of course.

Can anyone suggest a mechanism to accomplish this that is a) fast, and b) not terribly memory intensive. The amount of data can be quite large, and is coming from a plain text file and not a DB.

Thanks in advance.

In reply to Configurable key orders by Smitty

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