Re: Split file output into array of arrays

[colwellj]

Scott,

Try something akin to this;
N.B code is untested and I've probably screwed up the syntax somewhere.

my $arraycount=0;
my @array;
while(<INPUT>){
   #New record so new top level item
   if($_ =~ /^-/){
    $arraycount++;
   }else{
      #force array scalar to be a lower level array.
      push @{$array[$arraycount]}, $_; 
   }
}

or you could do both your steps at once.

my $arraycount=0;
my @array;
while(<INPUT>){
   #New record so new top level item
   if($_ =~ /^-/){
    $arraycount++;
   }else{
      #force array scalar to be a lower level HASH.
      my ($hkey,$hdet) = split/:/,$_; 
      ${$array[$arraycount]}{$hkey} = $hdet; 
   }
}

[GrandFather]

Keeping a count of elements in an array in Perl has rather a bad smell. Instead you could:

my @records;

while (<DATA>) {
    if ($_ =~ /^-/) {
        # New record
        push @records, [];
        next;
    }

    next if !@records;
    push @{$records[-1]}, $_;
}