> I found that if I got the data structures correct, the code usually flowed. If not, things got messy fast.
This reminds me of some famous quotes from Fred Brooks,
Rob Pike,
Eric S. Raymond,
and
Linus Torvalds:
The programmer at wit's end for lack of space can often do best
by disentangling himself from his code, rearing back, and
contemplating his data.
Representation is the essence of programming.
-- from The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks
Data dominates.
If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well,
the algorithms will almost always be self-evident.
Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.
-- Rob Pike
Show me your code and conceal your data structures, and I shall continue to be mystified.
Show me your data structures, and I won't usually need your code; it'll be obvious.
-- Eric S. Raymond
I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good
one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important.
Bad programmers worry about the code.
Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.
-- Linus Torvalds
Perl Data Structure References
- Tie::Hash - base class definitions for tied hashes
- YAML - YAML Ain't Markup Language
- JSON - JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) encoder/decoder
- JSON::MaybeXS - Use Cpanel::JSON::XS with a fallback to JSON::XS and JSON::PP
- TOML - Parser for Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language
- TOML Spec (github)
- Sereal - Fast, compact, powerful binary (de-)serialization
- SerealX::Store - Sereal based persistence for Perl data structures
- Config::Any - Load configuration from different file formats, transparently
- Config::Tiny - Read/Write .ini style files with as little code as possible
- Config::INI - simple .ini-file format
- Data::Dumper - stringified perl data structures, suitable for both printing and eval
- Data::Dump - Pretty printing of data structures
Perl 4 multidimensional array emulation:
- perlvar - if you refer to a hash element as $foo{$a,$b,$c} it really means $foo{join($;, $a, $b, $c)} ... where $; is the subscript separator for multidimensional array emulation aka $SUBSUP (default \034), borrowed from awk
- feature - note that Perl 5.34+ allows you to disable this old Perl 4 multidimensional array emulation via the 'multidimensional' feature
- perl 5.36 delta - ... and that use v5.36; disables multidimensional array emulation
- Whats new in Perl (youtube) by Ricardo Signes (TPC 2021) uses What is this madness? to describe this unfortunate multidimensional mis-feature :-)
See Also
Build and Test Automation References:
Updated: Many extra references added long after the original reply was made.
