I'm doing a bit of data munging for a client and
I want to suck around 6,000 records from a flat file
into a large hash of hashes. I've RTFM'd and I'm still
struggling--your help would be much appreciated.

Here's what I have so far: 
my %hash_of_hashes = ( my $record_no => my %unitfiles_hash );

#suck all the unit files into a big hash to make searching easier
while (<UNITFILES>) {

    my @unitfiles_field = split /,/;

    #this is just an autogen number
    $record = $unitfiles_field[0];

    %hash_of_hashes{$record_no} = (

      %unitfiles_hash = ( 
         lastname         => $unitfiles_field[1],
         firstname        => $unitfiles_field[2],
         DOB              => $unitfiles_field[7],
         funding          => $unitfiles_field[18],
         URNo             => $unitfiles_field[15],
         Photo_permission => $unitfiles_field[14],
                        );
      );
} #end while

[download]
I've also considered using an array of hashes, but that's also confused me.
Please help!
--
Microsoft delendum est.

In reply to Hash of hashes syntax by jens

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • 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! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.