Hello monks,

I have a simple command line menu when my script starts up. The menu is quite easy, but I am trying to figure out the best way to store the data. Here's an example (in the actual code there are 15 items per server):

my ($server,$db_type,$server_location,$server_function);
my @servers;
while (1) {
    system("clear");
    print "\t\t\tPLEASE CHOOSE AN OPTION FROM BELOW\n";
    print <<EOF;
     (1) Server Name:       $server
     (2) Database Type:     $db_type
     (3) Server Location:   $server_location
     (4) Server Function:   $server_function
    -------------------------------------------
     (A) Add Another Server
     (C) Continue
     (D) Done

     * - item is optional.
EOF
    print "Enter the number you would like to edit > ";
    chomp( my $choice = <STDIN> );
    if ( $choice == 1 ) {
        print "Please enter the server name: ";
        chomp( $server = <STDIN> );
    }
        elsif ( $choice == 2 ) {
        print "Please enter the database type: ";
        chomp( $db_type = <STDIN> );
    }
        elsif ( $choice == 3 ) {
        print "Please enter the server location: ";
        chomp( $server_location = <STDIN> );
    }
        elsif ( $choice == 4 ) {
        print "Please enter the server function: ";
        chomp( $server_function = <STDIN> );
    }
        elsif ( $choice =~ /a/i ) {
            push(@servers,"$server,$db_type,$server_location,$server_f
+unction);
            $server="";
            $db_type="";
            $server_location="";
            $server_function="";
        }
        elsif ( $choice =~ /c/i ) {
            push(@servers,"$server,$db_type,$server_location,$server_f
+unction);
            last;
        }
        else {
            next;
        }
}

.....
# later in the code
for my $server (@servers) {
    my ($server,$db_type,$server...)=split(',',$server);
    do stuff;
}

[download]


My question:
Is there a better way that this can be done, so that later the server data can be looked up by hostname or ip? Is there a better way to do the menu? This way just seems terrible.

In reply to Hash vs. Scalar+Text vs. DBD by walkingthecow

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