multilevel report

vlad.belogrudov has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Good time! I have puzzled myself with rather easy problem: there is a list of hosts, each host has several configurations, and each configuration runs several tests. The resulting structure reminds the following:

my %results;
$results{$host}{$config}{$test} = 'OK'; # or 'FAILED'
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I would like to format them into a table

---------------------------------
hosts | configs | tests | results
---------------------------------
host1 | conf1   | test1 | res1
      |         |----------------
      |         | test2 | res2
      |--------------------------
      | conf2   | test3 | res3
...
---------------------------------
host2 |
...
[download]

I could not figure out 'format' for such a table (all my attempts with multilines etc. brought nothing) and wonder if it's worth to look into CPAN for related functionality instead. Thanks for any ideas

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Re: multilevel report by marto (Cardinal) on Apr 13, 2011 at 10:02 UTC
"I would like to format them into a table --------------------------------- hosts \| configs \| tests \| results --------------------------------- host1........." Welcome to the Monastery. When you previewed your post it would have looked as bad as it currently does. Formatting advice is displayed when posting, please don't ignore it: Posts are HTML formatted. Put `<p> </p>` tags around your paragraphs. Put `<code> </code>` tags around your code and data! Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place. Please read these before you post! — How do I compose an effective node title? How do I post a question effectively? Markup in the Monastery	[reply]
Re: multilevel report by chrestomanci (Priest) on Apr 13, 2011 at 13:48 UTC
I had a similar programming problem a few years ago, where I wanted to generate a table where some cells would span several rows or columns, and it was hard to predict in advance how many rows/columns a cell would span. The solution I adopted was first to generate the table in memory as a simple 2 dimensional array of hashes, Then once the data had been turned into a table, I had another function that compared and merged neighbouring identical cells. Finally the table was rendered in it's final form. I was rendering to HTML. From your problem description, it looks like you need to render to plain text, so Text::Table looks suitable.	[reply]
Re: multilevel report by raybies (Chaplain) on Apr 13, 2011 at 12:35 UTC
wonder if it's worth to look into CPAN for related functionality instead CPAN's always worth looking at. Go for it and Good luck! --Ray	[reply]
Re^2: multilevel report by dasgar (Priest) on Apr 13, 2011 at 13:20 UTC
I agree with checking to see what's available on CPAN. Doing a quick search, here's two possible candidates: Text::Report Text::Table	[reply]