Hello all. I have a problem that I have been bashing my head against the wall on. I have a computed hash with a very complex format (multiple layers deep). I want to be able to pick out a series of values from keys stored in this hash, and would like to be able to store the key names in an array. For example, the array would contain
my @array = ( '{title}', '{Rule}{Severity}', '{Rule}{weight}', '{Rule}{id}', '{Rule}{version}', '{Rule}{title}', '{Rule}{detailedDescription}{VulnDiscussion}', '{Rule}{detailedDescription}{Responsibility}', '{Rule}{detailedDescription}{IAControls}', '{Rule}{check}{check-content}', '{Rule}{fixtext}{content}', );
I would like to later process the array and pull individual results out of the parent hash on the fly, al la:
foreach my $firstKey (sort keys %hashData) { foreach my $arrayKey (@array) { print $hashData{$firstKey}$arrayKey; } }

With '$hashData{$firstKey}$arrayKey' being treated like '$hashData{$firstKey}{Rule}{detailedDescription}{VulnDiscussion}'.

The problem is that I don't know how deep the array key may get on the fly, and at a certain point can just write a block of code quicker for each item in the array rather than try and make it more malleable. However, I really want to make the configuration (order of items to extract, etc) more, well, configurable, and not have to add a block of code each time the group wants a new piece of data added.

Thanks in advance! T

In reply to Storing an indeterminate number of hash keys in a variable by banesong

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