Hashes for counting

[hari9]

Hi all,

I'm trying to maintain a record of how many times clients connects to a server(This information is then processed further for directing the client suitably)

I'm using hashes which has the following keys: peer_address, times_connected.

so everytime a client connects to a server, its times_connected is incremented.

And the code at the server side is as below:

my %has;

while(1)
{
# waiting for new client connection.
$client_socket = $socket->accept();
# get the host and port number of newly connected client.
$peer_address = $client_socket->peerhost();
## check against previous connections
    if (exists $has{$peer_address})
    {
        $has{$peer_address}->{times_connect}=$has{$peer_address}->{tim
+es_connect}+1;
        print "No. of Times it has communicated : $has{$peer_address}-
+>{times_connect}";
    }
    else 
    {
        print "new connection\n";
        $t=1;
        ++$has{$peer_address};
        $has{$peer_address}->{times_connect}=$t;
    }    
    
    }

Now when I run client script from one machine, I get a proper count of times_connect, but when I use the second machine to run the client code, the times_connect is getting mixed up.

in short, I'm not able to get times_connect for each client.

Any help you be great. Thanks

[zentara]

Print out some debug information in your code, like all the hash values as they come in, that way you can see what is happening.

use Data::Dumper;

$peer_address = $client_socket->peerhost();

print "peer_address\n";

## check against previous connections
    if (exists $has{$peer_address})
    {
       
      print "exists\n";  

      $has{$peer_address}->{times_connect}++;
      print "No. of Times it has communicated : $has{$peer_address}-
+>{times_connect}";
    }
    else 
    {
        print "new connection\n";
        $t=1;
        ++$has{$peer_address};
        $has{$peer_address}->{times_connect}=$t;
    }    
    
    }

#see what you have
print $DATA::Dumper(\%has),"\n";

[ysth]

use strict;. It will give you an error and from that you will be able to see where you are accidentally changing a hash reference to a number. Without use strict; enabled, that number is interpreted as a new symbolic hash reference, which is not at all what you intend.

[fullermd]

Well, for one thing, this line:

$has{$peer_address}->{times_connect}=$has{$peer_address}->{times_conne
+ct}+1;

is way more complicated than necessary. Firstly, you don't need the internal -> dereferences, and second, why repeat yourself instead of just using an increment?

$has{$peer_address}{times_connect}++;

Second, since (at least in the code you're giving) you're not tracking anything but the times_connect, you don't need that extra layer anyway; just make $has{$peer_address} the count:

$has{$peer_address}++;

(of course, if you're tracking more info in reality you wouldn't want to do that, but...)

And third, since perl data structure autovivify, you don't need the branch doing special stuff based on whether $has{$peer_address} already exists. You can just do the increment unconditionally, and it'll start at 0++ (a.k.a., 1) if it's not already set.

Since you have ++$has{$peer_address}; in your else branch, it rather reads like you sorta intended to do this in the first place, but then you do other weird stuff elsewhere...