Re: Complex Data Structure Suggestions Wanted

[monarch]

First may I say yours was a well written question, and through your research you'd actually got most of the concepts right.. and were pretty close to an answer!

Because data structures get very complex very fast I almost never use two dollar signs in a row. I always encapsulate in {} braces.

Having the data would have helped a lot. Because I suspect your structure is more complex than my interpretation of your sub-routine.

Just cleaning up the subroutine for my own benefit I would have written:

sub ReadSource( $ $ )
{
    my $DataSource = shift;
    my $HashRef    = shift;
    
    foreach my $ItemID (@Data)
    {
        my $data_array_ref = $HashRef->{$ItemID};

        if ( $data_array_ref )
        {
            push( @{$data_array_ref}, $DataSource );
        }
        else
        {
            $HashRef->{$ItemID} = [ $DataSource ];
        }
    }
}

.. but it is more than likely I have misinterpreted something there as I've only allowed for a hash of arrays. IE I'm presuming you would call this something like follows:

  my %myhash = ();  # empty hash
  my @Data = ( 'this', 'that', 'that over there' );

  my $datasource = 'banana';

  ReadSource( $datasource, \%myhash );

which when printed:

  use Data::Dumper;

  ReadSource( $datasource, \%myhash );
  print( Dumper( \%myhash ) . "\n" );

.. results in the following output:

$VAR1 = {
          'this' => [
                      'banana'
                    ],
          'that' => [
                      'banana'
                    ],
          'that over there' => [
                                 'banana'
                               ]
        };

update: also as a personal comment I like to use hungarian type notation on complex structures, it can give me an idea of what I'm playing with before I play with it.