in reply to Re^3: Config files
in thread Config files

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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Re^5: Config files
by Jenda (Abbot) on Dec 11, 2004 at 00:30 UTC

    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
    We'd like to help you learn to help yourself
    Look around you, all you see are sympathetic eyes
    Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home
       -- P. Simon in Mrs. Robinson

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      Hi Jenda

      Thank you for the reply. I understood: 

      @files = split /\s*,\s*/, $config->{path}{files};

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      If the arrays can occur at any place in the config file along with scalar values, I did not understand how the following code takes care of that 

      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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      Actually, I did not understand the following line: 

       foreach my $value (qw(files colors and other options that should be 
+arrays)) {

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      Thanks.

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        qw(foo bar baz) means the same as ('foo', 'bar', 'baz'). The inner loop loops through the names of the options that you want to split.

        The thing is that if you split everything that contains the delimiters you run into problems. You'd have to check all the time whether $config->{sectionName}{valueName} is a scalar or an array ref. That'd be inconvenient. So it's better to split the options that may contain multiple values (even if they don't in some case) and leave the others intact. So that you can be sure $config->{path}{root} is a string and $config->{path}{files} is an array (ref).

        Jenda
        We'd like to help you learn to help yourself
        Look around you, all you see are sympathetic eyes
        Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home
           -- P. Simon in Mrs. Robinson

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