Hash problems

EchoAngel has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks, I'm parsing this huge file with a lot of hierarchy in it. For example, I would save stuff like $FoodHash{colour}{size}{taste} = line location Sometimes, I get a data for

$FoodHash{green}{big} = "watermelon";
$FoodHash{green}{big}{sweet} = "1234";
[download]

sometimes when i go back to the $FoodHash{green}{big}, i would lose the value. Does anyone know why?

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Re: Hash problems by ysth (Canon) on Aug 27, 2004 at 19:00 UTC
Those two lines can't both be represented. `$FoodHash{green}{big}` can't store both a string `"watermelon"`, and a hashref `{ sweet => "1234" }`. Consider adding {value} to the end of all your data, so that everything is a hashref except when the key is "value". (Use some other string if "value" will conflict with your data.) So your assignments become: `$FoodHash{green}{big}{value} = "watermelon"; $FoodHash{green}{big}{sweet}{value} = "1234";` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Hash problems by fizbin (Chaplain) on Aug 27, 2004 at 20:16 UTC
Instead of `value`, you could always use the empty string: `$FoodHash{green}{big}{""} = "watermelon"; $FoodHash{green}{big}{sweet}{""} = "1234";` [download] `-- @/=map{[/./g]}qw/.h_nJ Xapou cets krht ele_ r_ra/; map{y/X_/\n /;print}map{pop@$_}@/for@/` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]