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

Dear Monks,

Is there any option to append the values of the same key in a hash.

eg.
%h =(
      aid=>'6077',
      6077.1=>{pii=>"aaaa",
               pit=>"bbbb",
               doi=>"cccc",
              },
      abc=>'asdf',
      );

#I need to append values as follows

$h{6077.1} = { pii=>"aaaa",
               pit=>"bbbb",
               doi=>"cccc",
               xmltype=>'000',
               weight=>'111',
               }

[download]

Regards,
Shanmugam A.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: append values to a same key in hash
by targetsmart (Curate) on Jul 06, 2009 at 09:24 UTC 
    $h{6077.1}{'xmltype'} = '000';
$h{6077.1}{'weight'} = '111';

    [download]
    will do it.
    see perldsc

    Vivek
    -- 'I' am not the body, 'I' am the 'soul', which has no beginning or no end, no attachment or no aversion, nothing to attain or lose.
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: append values to a same key in hash
by jethro (Monsignor) on Jul 06, 2009 at 09:26 UTC
    $h{6077.1}->{xmltype}= '000';

    You don't really append to a hash (since there is no ordered row or queue where you can append behind) but just insert values. To answer your probable next question too, if you want to test if a value already exists in the hash, you can use the function exists()

    if (exists($h{6077.1}->{xmltype}) { ... }

    [download]

    UPDATE: changed two ] to }, stupid typing error found thanks to AnomalousMonk

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      Just be aware that exists($h{a}->{b}) will autovivify the first hash key component ({a}):

      use strict;
use warnings;
my %h;

unless (exists($h{foo}{bar})) {
  print "\$h{foo}{bar} exists: no\n";
  print "\$h{foo} exists: ", exists($h{foo})?'yes':'no', "\n";
}

#outputs
#  $h{foo}{bar} exists: no
#  $h{foo} exists: yes

      [download]

      If you want to be extra careful not to create hash keys, you'll have to use if (exists($h{a} and exists($h{a}->{b}) instead. and (or &&) short circuits so you'll never reach the second test if the first part of the key is non-existent.

      Best, beth

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      @shan emails,
      you can use hash of hash data structure.
[reply]
      Thank you,

      it works fine.

      Thanks for your response.
[reply]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom