Transforming hash (removing useless key)

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

I am using a module's "fetch" function, which returns a hash of data from a (LDAP) database. It's used as follows:

my $data = $self->{'ldap'}->fetch(
    source => $self->{'config'}->{'ldap.base'},
    filter => "cn=$self->{'arg'}->{'host'}"
);
[download]

This is useful because it organizes the data based on DNs:

$data = {
  'cn=hostA,ou=Hosts,dc=company,dc=com' = {
    cn => 'hostA',
    ipAddress => '192.168.0.1',
  },
  'cn=hostB,ou=Hosts,dc=company,dc=com' = {
    cn => 'hostB',
    ipAddress => '192.168.0.2',
  }
}
[download]

...and so on. The problem is, I am using this method to (occasionally) return only one DN. At the moment, I'm using the following code to transform $data so that it does not contain the DN key:

map { $data = $data->{$_}; } keys %{$data};
[download]

But I can only imagine that there must be a better way. Is there? The catch is to assume that the key (DN) is not known in advance.

Thanks.

-s.

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Re: Transforming hash (removing useless key) by friedo (Prior) on Jan 28, 2005 at 19:38 UTC
I abhor the use of `map` in void context, so I would do something like this: `my ( $thing ) = values %$data;` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Transforming hash (removing useless key) by bgreenlee (Friar) on Jan 28, 2005 at 20:18 UTC
You could also do: `my $result = (each %$data)[1];` [download] -b	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Transforming hash (removing useless key) by nobull (Friar) on Jan 29, 2005 at 09:59 UTC
Or simply `my $result = (%$data)[1];` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Transforming hash (removing useless key) by olivierp (Hermit) on Jan 28, 2005 at 21:12 UTC
As you mention you will be only returning a single key, how about: `$data = delete $data->{ (keys(%$data))[0] };` [download] HTH -- Olivier	[reply] [d/l]