i'm new to actual programming languages, but i have done a lot with programming spreadsheets. please don't laugh, i already heard that's not "real" programming. after looking at a few possible languages perl seems to be my best option. i have done some simple program exercises and am encouraged that it makes sense to me.

i'm playing with arrays now and came across references to hashes. i get the concept of hashes having keys and values instead of arrays having indices and values but right now i don't see the advantage, other than using names for keys instead of numbers for indices. i tried using variables set to numbers to get values out of arrays and it seemed to work. is that different from hashes?

and i would think the program would find the values faster if the keys are ordered like the indices in arrays. are hashes just there for convenience, so i don't have to declare index variables if i don't want to get array values using just number?

In reply to why use a hash instead of an array by DarrenSol

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.