A ladder system, for those of you who don't know, is where objects sit on "rungs" which determine their "score". Example, #1 rung is the highest spot. A lower rung that beats a higher rung (in whatever is being ranked) takes the higher rung's place, and the higher rung moves down x% of the total rungs.

How would one implement this efficiently in Perl? I am planning on using mySQL for the data storage, and was considering having a "rung" field. After thinking about this, I came to the conclusion that I'd need to modify lots and lots of fields to decrement their rung number if another object moved ahead. I eventually decided that the most efficient way would be to have a plaintext file with a unique identifier for each object stored with lines as their respective rungs. (ie: first line would be the first rung, 5th line would be the fifth rung, etc.) Then changing every rung's number would not be so intensive.

After thinking on this flattext + mySQL method, I decided I might as well be shooting myself in the foot. What would you monks recommend doing to keep track of rungs, preferrably staying away from a flattext list?

Thanks;

In reply to Implementation of a Ladder System by Anonymous Monk

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