in reply to Grouping Objects by Attribute

... but I wondered if there was another way without using references.

As you've received excellent answers above, this is a general comment. You're basically asking if you can drive a car without a rearview mirror. Well, yes, you can. But, it's a really dumb way to drive a car.

References are an integral part of Perl5, and should be treated as another tool in your toolbox, not as something to be feared and shunned. They are the way to create multi-level data structures1. Period.

The Perl Cookbook generally has the best-of-breed way of doing task XYZ. It's the reason it's the cookbook. So, I'd trust it.

Now, I'm not saying "Don't question the wisdom", by any means. But, for most questions, you'll get the answer "The wisdom is right." *grins*

  1. Well, there are other ways, but you really don't want to go there. References were put into the language for a really darn good reason. Globbing your data structures a la Perl4 just sucks.

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