The thing returned by ReadINI() is a reference to a hash of hashes. This means that:

• to access a specific value in a specific section: $config->{sectionName}{valueName}
• to list the sections: foreach my $sectionName (keys %$config) {...
• to list the values in a section:
  foreach my $name (%{$config->{sectionName}}) { print "$name = $config->{sectionName}{$name}\n"; }
  or
  for my $Section ($config->{sectionName) { foreach my $name (%$Section) { print "$name = $Section->{$name}\n"; }} or ...

Thanks Jenda, That made a hashes a lot clearer...One other question I had with Config::IniHash...What is the best way to store arrays in the config file?

So if I had an array:

@colors = qw ( red blue green )

and I wanted to put it in the config file so anybody could change it, but also could be read by the Config::IniHash module, what is the best way to write it in the config file?

I am following your example and have changed other variables in the config file to look something like:

[path]
root = C:\test
code = %root%\code1
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Just choose a delimiter and split the values after you read them. What delimiter to use depends on the characters allowed in the values, but most of the time comma is good enough. So assuming the INI contains:

[path]
files=foo.txt,bar.txt,baz.csv
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you'd just need to do something like:

@files = split /\s*,\s*/, $config->{path}{files};
 # the \s* removes the optional whitespace around delimiters
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You might do the splitting inside the forValue=> callback, but I think that would just complicate the code. You'd have to specify what values to split, because you'd definitely not want to split everything that contains the delimiter. So I think it's better to split after everything is read.

If you did want to modify the $config structure to contain certain values as arrays you might do something like this:

foreach my $Section (values %$config) {
 # $Section is a hash ref containing the values of the section, not th
+e section name!
  foreach my $value (qw(files colors and other options that should be 
+arrays)) {
    $Section->{$value} = [split /\s*,\s*/, $Section->{$value}];
  }
}
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After this the $config->{anySection}{files} is no longer a string but a reference to an anonymous array containing the individual items.

Jenda


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