I suspect you have to think through your desired data structure more before you can write the code you want. However as a general idea I would suggest having the initial insertion code always assume the general case (multiple keys) and then perform a second pass to simplify the surprised excess. For an example of how to perform the second pass you can study how XML::Simple does it.

In reply to Re (tilly) 1: Building and returning structured records from a query by tilly
in thread Building and returning structured records from a query by AidanLee

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