drodinthe559 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Gurus: I'm trying to put data into a hash using my first field as the key. I'm still not familiar enough with hashes to add it. I know the below is wrong, but I think I'm close. 
my %hash;

while ($connection->FetchRow()) {
    my %dataRow = $connection->DataHash();
    %hash($dataRow{Client_ID});
    };

[download]
Thank you. D-Rod

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Win32::ODBC results in hash
by sierpinski (Chaplain) on Mar 22, 2010 at 19:11 UTC
    What is Client_ID? The key? If it's a variable, it's missing its prefix ($, @, etc).

    Hashes are assigned data in many ways: 
    %hash{$key} = $value;

or

%hash = ( $key => $value);

another one:

%hash = ('$key1','$value1','$key2','$value2');

    [download]
    Notice that the first one uses curly braces {}, but the second and third ones use standard parens.

    Update: fixed typos... long day!
[reply]
[d/l]
      Client_ID is the field I want to use as the key.
[reply]
        In that case you'd want to do something like this:
        %hash{"Client_ID"} = $dataRow;

        [download]
        This will store the value of $dataRow into %hash, with the index (key) being the string "Client_ID".

        I highly recommend getting Data::Dumper from CPAN so you can dump your data structure to a scalar and print it. It makes it very easy to see when you've done something wrong, and for being new to hashes, I think it's a great tool. I use it all the time.
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Win32::ODBC results in hash
by toolic (Bishop) on Mar 22, 2010 at 19:27 UTC
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      I don't why, but I get syntax error. I receive the follow syntax error: "%hash(" 
       
while ($connection->FetchRow()) {
    %dataRow = $connection->DataHash();
    %hash( $key => $dataRow{Client_ID} );
    };

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
        I finally got it to work. Thanks for your help. 
        my %hash = ();

while ($connection->FetchRow()) {
    my %dataRow = $connection->DataHash();
    $hash{ $dataRow{Client_ID} } = $dataRow{Contact_Information};
    };

        [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

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