Hi

for performance reasons¹ I have to hold data in an array instead of a hash, but I don't wanna obfuscate my code with numerical indices.

IIRC there is a deprecated approach to define hash-like arrays for this reason (actually I can't find it in the 5.10 docs anymore)

The best solution I came up till now is using constants in a dedicated package to hold the indices:

my @arr=("jesus","heaven");
 
{
  package t;
  sub NAME () {0};
  sub ADDRESS () {1};
 
  print $arr[NAME],$arr[ADDRESS]
}
 
print $arr[t::NAME],$arr[t::ADDRESS];

[download]

Such that the indices will be expanded at compile time.

> perl -MO=Deparse /tmp/tst.pl
sub t::NAME () { 0 }
sub t::ADDRESS () { 1 }
my(@arr) = ('jesus', 'heaven');
{
    package t;
    print $arr[0], $arr[1];
}
print $arr[0], $arr[1];
/tmp/tst.pl syntax OK

[download]

Any other suggestions???

Cheers Rolf

UPDATE: hmm I could use ' instead of :: to shorten the notation.

1) a deeply branching recursive function.

In reply to Named array indices by LanX

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.