Re: hash, a troublemaker?

You can declare the keys as constants as you suggest, or use the lock_keys function from Hash::Util, which comes standard in recent perls. The latter will raise an exception at runtime if an non-existant key is set.

BTW, if you do use constants, an array is more efficient unless only a sparse set of keys are ever used at once:

use constant { K_AGE => 0, K_NAME => 1 };

my @record;
   $record[K_AGE]  = 1001;
   $record[K_NAME] = 'Doraemon';
[download]

The difficulty in making hashes "strict" is just one of the reasons why many people dislike blessed-hashref object implementations.

Update: See also: non-autovivifing hash, how to avoid mis-spelling hash keys?.

blokhead

Comment on Re: hash, a troublemaker? Download Code

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Re(2): hash, a troublemaker? by bart (Canon) on May 12, 2004 at 08:50 UTC
You seem to be reinventing fields, and, dare I say it, pseudo-hashes, a now deprecated feature where you could (or still can) use the hash syntax to access fields in an array. Borrowing your example, the internal structure for pseudo-hashes is: `my $record = [ { K_AGE => 1, K_NAME => 2 }, 1001, 'Doraemon' ];` [download] And you can access it like: `print "Name: '$record->{K_NAME}' Age: $record->{K_AGE}\n";` [download] It just works for 5.6.x, still works for 5.8.3 though with a warning, and this feature will be gone from 5.10.0 on. See the docs on fields for more info, including info on what you really should be using instead.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: hash, a troublemaker? by Doraemon (Beadle) on May 12, 2004 at 06:23 UTC
(The Hash::Util seems to be the best approach, i think) For the 'using constant' approach, I never thought about using arrays. Yes, array ... (why i never thought about it, duh!), looks better. Thanx	[reply]