I think my brain disappeared temporarily.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to to organize my data so that I can produce output in a more flexible way.

For example, let's say that I have 3 pieces of data: Employee Number, Form Number, Date and I want to be able to produce a summary based on either the Employee Number or Form Number. E.g., For employee 1, list all the form numbers and when they were signed and, likewise, list the employees that have signed a particular form with date signed.

I know that I could stick everything in an sequential array and just offset by three until the third offset counter equals the size of the array but looking at the code is making me ill. Of course, this assumes that every set of data has exactly 3 elements, which is the case here (seems like a poor coding practice to me though).

Unfortunately, I've never really dealt with complex data structures so I'm a little at lost as to how to structure this data. A hash of arrays, hash of hashes, etc.

If that doesn't make sense here's some test data:

Employee  Form   Date
10001      10    20090101
10002      10    20080515
10003      10    20090323
10001      20    20090412
10002      20    20090711

[download]

I'm trying to make the output look something like this:

10001
      10    20090101
      20    20090412
10002
      10    20080515
      20    20090711
10003
      10    20090323

[download]

Or

10
      10001    20090101
      10002    20090412
      10003    20090323
20
      10001    20090412
      10002    20090711

[download]

Hopefully, that makes more sense than my word-based explanation.

Thanks

In reply to Data Structure Question by bohrme

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