It doesn't matter how you start. If making a decision really bothers you, you could write each option into a suitably sized box drawn on a piece of paper, then throw a dart at it and choose a technique that way. However, once you start coding you'll generally pretty quickly find what doesn't work and why. Then you can make a somewhat better informed decision (perhaps by eliminating some options from the decision tool?).

When you have some code to show (any code, but be sensible) then it is time to come back and help refine it.

As a general rule though, use a hash when you need to look stuff up and an array when you don't need to look it up, but do need to keep it together and possibly need to retain its order. For more complicated stuff just apply the rule iteratively: 'I need to look something up to get a list of values = hash of array'.

True laziness is hard work

In reply to Re: ISOLATE 2 ASSOCIATED FIELDS IN A TEXT FILE, then CONVERT the first into another based on a table of definitions by GrandFather
in thread ISOLATE 2 ASSOCIATED FIELDS IN A TEXT FILE, then CONVERT the first into another based on a table of definitions by mupud

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.