Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash

Hi everyone,

Say you had an unknown hash structure and you didnt know how many dimensions to it there were. By dimension I mean child hashes, so it could be HoH, HoHoH, HoHoHoH, and so on, you just dont know.

How would you traverse this hash to print out all key => value pairs. The only way I know how is a series of for loops, however that would mean you have to know in advance how deep it goes.

   for my $k1 ( sort keys %{ $self->{"_dataSymbols"} } ) 
   {
      print "$k1\n";

      for my $k2 ( sort keys %{ $self->{"_dataSymbols"}->{ $k1 }} ) 
      {
         print "\t$k2\n";

         for my $k3 ( sort keys %{ $self->{"_dataSymbols"}->{ $k1 }->{
+ $k2 } } )
         {
            print "\t\t$k3\n";

            for my $k4 ( sort keys %{ $self->{"_dataSymbols"}->{ $k1 }
+->{ $k2 }->{ $k3 } } )
            {
               print "\t\t\t$k4\n";

               for my $k5 ( sort keys %{ $self->{"_dataSymbols"}->{ $k
+1 }->{ $k2 }->{ $k3 }->{ $k4 } } )
               {
                  print "\t\t\t\t$k5\n";

                  for my $k6 ( sort keys %{ $self->{"_dataSymbols"}->{
+ $k1 }->{ $k2 }->{ $k3 }->{ $k4 }->{ $k5 } } )
                  {
                     print "\t\t\t\t\t$k6 => %{ $self->{"_dataSymbols"
+}->{ $k1 }->{ $k2 }->{ $k3 }->{ $k4 }->{ $k5 } }\n";

                  }
               }
            }
         }
      }
   }

[download]

Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance, Mich.

Comment on Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash Download Code
Re: Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash by citromatik (Curate) on Jul 12, 2007 at 09:51 UTC
You can use Data::Dumper: `use Data::Dumper; print Dumper \%hash;` [download] citromatik	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash by Tomte (Priest) on Jul 12, 2007 at 10:30 UTC
How would you traverse this hash to print out all key => value pairs. The only way I know how is a series of for loops, however that would mean you have to know in advance how deep it goes. If printing is all you want, use Data::Dumper or one of its kind as suggested - if you want to code the stuff yourself (anybody smelling homework here?), or have really completly different needs than printing, then have a look at ref, which you can use to determin the datatype of the inspected value, and thus to decide what action to take (recurse into another hash, recurse into array, print a scalar, ...). A recursive implementation will be easiest to implement - however if the structures you expect are deeply nested, I'd use a stack to implement an iterative solution. regards, tomte An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. -- Albert Camus	[reply]
Re^2: Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash by Anonymous Monk on Jul 12, 2007 at 11:09 UTC
Thanks, your help is appreciated, i've managed to print out what I want working using Data::Dumper. I just needed to testing whether a particular hash holds the information I need. You can "smell" homework all you like but it wasnt the case. Why cant it be a newbie getting to grips with programming, who wants to change some existing code he has found? Half of learning to program is not only writing your own code but understanding and altering existing code, is it not?	[reply]
Re^3: Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash by Tomte (Priest) on Jul 12, 2007 at 11:58 UTC
Why cant it be a newbie getting to grips with programming, who wants to change some existing code he has found? It certainly can - therefore I answered with the pointers to the solution GrandFather provided in code - it would have helped you in either case. I just needed to testing whether a particular hash holds the information I need. Then why didn't you state that in your posting? While printing the whole datastructure and scanning it manually is surly working, solutions to search for particular values/keys in an arbitrary structured hash aren't that hard to achieve either :-) Acting as anonymonk and asking seemingly simple to answer questions doesn't help getting a lot of trust in advance, at least with me. A newbie getting to grips with programming in Perl could certainly go to alot of places worse than perlmonks, but not that many better suited to advance your skills: Please register an account, read Welcome to the Monastery! Make yourself at home., have a look around - and be indeed welcome. regards, tomte An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. -- Albert Camus	[reply]
Re: Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash by GrandFather (Cardinal) on Jul 12, 2007 at 10:46 UTC
Recursion is the trick: use strict; use warnings; my %hash = ( 1 => { a => { i => 'level 3', ii => 'level 3', iii => 'level 3', }, b => { i => 'level 3', ii => 'level 3', iii => 'level 3', }, }, 2 => {a => 'level2', b => 'level2'}, 3 => 'level 1', 4 => 'level 1', ); print dumpHash(\%hash); sub dumpHash { my ($element, $indent) = @_; $indent \|\|= ''; return "$indent$element\n" unless 'HASH' eq ref $element; my $str= ''; for my $key (sort keys %$element) { $str .= "$indent$key =>\n"; $str .= dumpHash ($element->{$key}, $indent . ' '); } return $str; } [download] Prints: `1 => a => i => level 3 ii => level 3 iii => level 3 b => i => level 3 ii => level 3 iii => level 3 2 => a => level2 b => level2 3 => level 1 4 => level 1` [download] DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash by Anonymous Monk on Jul 27, 2012 at 18:05 UTC
how would i do something like 1 => a =>i =>level 3 1=> a=> =>ii => level3 1=>a=>iii=>level3 etc.... Please help	[reply]
Re^3: Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash by Anonymous Monk on Jul 27, 2012 at 18:10 UTC
How would i print the output like this : 1 => a =>i =>level 3 1=> a=> =>ii => level3 1=>a=>iii=>level3 etc I could not workout the code to go back to the start and traverse back.	[reply]
Re^4: Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash by Anonymous Monk on Jul 28, 2012 at 08:39 UTC
Re^5: Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash by Anonymous Monk on Jul 28, 2012 at 22:15 UTC
Re^4: Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash by Anonymous Monk on Jul 28, 2012 at 22:37 UTC
Re^5: Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash by Anonymous Monk on Jul 30, 2012 at 04:36 UTC


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Traverse an unknown multi-dimensional hash

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