What would be the easier way

[zee3b]

Hey guys, Im trying to parse a file and get an output by giving in house. Example of the code is below

set height "house" 
set height "house" "string"
set height "house" "string"
set height "table" "string"
set height "table" "string"

Now I can't use a hash table because it won't allow duplicate keys. I want to be able to put out all the strings when I give the input as "house" or the values of height of table when I give in table. So I want to have a group name, "table" that the program will make automatically and then put the strings in that group, an array or something.

The strings have spaces too, but they are in quotation marks. Thanks!

[james2vegas]

Use a hash table with an array ref for each entry, doing something like push @{ $height{$input} }, $value; after parsing each line into $input and $value; leaving you with something like this:



%height = (
  'house' => [
               string1,
               string2
             ],
  'table' => [
               string3,
               string4
             ]
)

and @{$height{house}} would be all the values for house in an array

[zee3b]

hey, im sorry i didnt really get that since ive started using perl recently, can you explain this part to me a little @{ $height{$input}} What will my array be called then? Thanks!

[james2vegas]

@{ $whatever } de-references the array ref $whatever so you can use the reference as an array. Your data are contained in array references which you need to de-reference with @{ } to use as arrays.

[Anonymous Monk]

:) Your array is called  $height{$input} References quick reference

[CountZero]

I would do it this way:

use Modern::Perl;
use Data::Dump qw/dump/;

my %heights;

while (<DATA>) {
    push @{$heights{$1}}, $3 if /set\s+height\s+"([^"]+)"\s*("([^"]+)"
+)?/;
}
say dump(%heights);

__DATA__
set height "house"
set height "house" "5 meter"
set height "house" "10 yards"
set height "table" "80 cm"
set height "table" "30 inch"

Output:

(
  "house",
      [undef, "5 meter", "10 yards"],
  "table",
      ["80 cm", "30 inch"],
)