OK. I take the challenge. Helping ladies (especially pretty ladies) in distress is my foible. ;)

I really do not see what --conceptually-- is your problem.

One of the fields in your record structure holds the name of the spouse. Assuming the name is a key field in your record structure, the "spouse" field is a link to the record which holds the personal data of the spouse. No problem at all to implement that in a database or in a hash (or rather a hash of hashrefs).

However, your implementation seems ... strange. You actually make each record into an object of the Person-class. So far so good.

But of course, such an object can only hold one instance at the same time and you are overwriting the same object each time with new data.

I am not sure that using objects is the right way forward here. A possible solution could be to save each new object into a hash (the key would be the name and the value the object), but to me that seems a huge waste of effort for a small return. Why not just saving the data in a database and if you really want to go the OOP-way, access the database with module::DBIx::Class.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

My blog: Imperial Deltronics

In reply to Re: how to use hash that points to the same hash? by CountZero
in thread how to use hash that points to the same hash? by prjain

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