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

Dear Monks,

I have a set of different complex data structures and depending on many variables I print different combination of them. Right now I have 7 different print statement which have 18+ each variables and I want to make it shorter. A simplified example line from a print statement

@{ $Data{$Registration}->{Name} }[$Rank], "\t",

What I would like to do is store this in a variable for example $xx and then just put $xx in the print statements retaining the changeable $Registration and $Rank variables. I tried to look in perl output manuals but could't find something like this (dereferencing is something else).

BTW if I am pulling massive text files using a HTTP Request is it better to save it to a local text file first (printing it on the go since its pulled in batches looking how the files grow) and then load it into a variable or load it straight away. I was wondering about speed and potential memory limits (I am missing some data and I was wondering if this might be the cause). Thanks for your help.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl print statement + HTTP request
by betterworld (Curate) on Jun 07, 2012 at 11:54 UTC

    What you are thinking of is some kind of a closure, like this:

    my $make_output = sub {
    my ($Registration, $Rank) = @_;
    return @{ $Data{$Registration}->{Name} }[$Rank], "\t";
};

print $make_output->($Registration1, $Rank1),
      $make_output->($Registration2, $Rank2);

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    Though I guess that you might be able to simplify your code by using techniques such as OO.

    Update: The following code shows what an OO variant would look like. Maybe you are trying to do something completely different; but according to your short line of code, I imagine that you could probably use this example.

    my $data = Data->new( ... );
print $data->make_output($Registration1, $Rank1),
      $data->make_output($Registration2, $Rank2);


# class definition
package Data;

sub new {
    # set up data object
    # ...
}

sub make_output {
    my ($self, $Registration, $Rank) = @_;

    return @{ $self->{$Registration}->{Name} }[$Rank], "\t";
}

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[d/l]
[select]
      Exactly what i was looking for and a straighforward method. Anyone have any idea about the HTTP request part? For me it seems it would not matter but I want to make sure.
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