Re: hash sorting/alphabetization issue : country postal codes

my %country_names = (
     "AF" => "Afghanistan",
     "AX" => "Aland Islands",
     "AL" => "Albania",
     "DZ" => "Algeria",
     "AS" => "American Samoa",
     "AD" => "Andorra",
);

my @intl_files = <DATA>;
chomp @intl_files; # not needed when using opendir/readdir

#map removes the ".txt" file suffix
#sort compares country names, not codes

my @sorted =
    sort { $country_names{ $a } cmp $country_names{ $b } }
    map  { substr( $_, 0, rindex( $_, '.' ) ) } @intl_files;

foreach my $file ( @sorted ) {
    print "<option value=\"$file\">$country_names{$file}</option>\n";
}

__DATA__
AL.txt
DZ.txt
AS.txt
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Comment on Re: hash sorting/alphabetization issue : country postal codes Download Code

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Re^2: hash sorting/alphabetization issue : country postal codes by hmbscully (Scribe) on Jul 03, 2007 at 20:06 UTC
Thank you. I understand the problem in my thinking now. I see that I needed to sort previous to the foreach loop rather than in it. I know there are always multiple ways to do things, but this one makes sense to me. I learn more and more about less and less until eventually I know everything about nothing.	[reply]
Re^3: hash sorting/alphabetization issue : country postal codes by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jul 04, 2007 at 03:32 UTC
I see that I needed to sort previous to the foreach loop rather than in it. No, that's not the problem you were having. And there's no problem with putting the `sort` inside the `foreach` statement. `my @codes = map { substr($_, 0, rindex($_, '.')) } @intl_files; foreach my $code ( sort { $country_names{$a} cmp $country_names{$b} } ) { print "<option value=\"$code\">$country_names{$code}</option>\n"; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]