in reply to Array of Hashes

You'll have to loop over the array, like so: 
my $wanted;

for my $href (@outputFiles) {
  $wanted = $href, last if exists $href->{$captureId};
}

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My code gives you $wanted which IS the hash reference, rather than the index in the array. You'd print $wanted->{$captureId} and $wanted->{type}.

If you don't have duplicate hash keys, though, why are you using an array of hash refs?

Jeff japhy Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and perl hacker
How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart

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Re^2: Array of Hashes
by ramya2005 (Scribe) on Sep 20, 2005 at 17:39 UTC
    Thanks that works!

    <If you don't have duplicate hash keys, though, why are you using an array of hash refs?>
    I will not have duplicate captureID's. But I want to record the data in the following table using some Perl data structure.

    captureID | outputFileLocation| Filetype
    ------------|--------------------|---------
    captureID1 | c:/temp/test.xml | 4
    captureID2 | c:/test/temp.xml | 6 ......

    In this captureID is unique. Is there any other way of handling this data other than array of hashes?
[reply]
      Is there any other way of handling this data...

      Since all the "captureID" values are unique, and these are the values that you want to use for fetching information about a given entry, I guess the question is, "why use an array at all?" I think a HoH (or even a simple hash) would work just as well: 

      my %outputFiles;

sub setOutputFile
{
    my ($id,$path,$type) = @_;

# HoH method:
    $outputFiles{$id}{path} = $path;
    $outputFiles{$id}{type} = $type;

# or, simple hash method:
#   $outputFiles{$id} = join "=:=", $type, $path;
}

sub getOutputFiles
{
    my $id = shift;

# HoH method:
    my $type = $outputFiles{$id}{type};
    my $path = $outputFiles{$id}{path};

# or, simple hash method:
#   my ( $type, $path ) = split /=:=/, $outputFiles{$id};

# ... do something with $path and $type ...
}

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
Re^2: Array of Hashes
by Angel (Friar) on Sep 20, 2005 at 19:42 UTC
    But though it is less efficient?

    Could you not keep a second index. Or multiple indicies? Or is there a better way. I am asking since I am holding data from a database in a loh for html::template's happiness and the second index prevents a linear scan each time.

    %primary_key{ $capture_id } = $array_index;
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