Re^2: can't use string as an array ref....

[inblosam]

That works really great, thank you! I have more than one field (I simplified it for the sake of easy duplication), so besides edit_name_N I may have edit_type_N, what is the best way to work that in too? Another "next if" won't work, and when I just do an if it gives me everything posted.

Thanks a ton! I like this way better than the other way from the other node I think.

[monarch]

There are numerous ways of approaching this. Two suggestions are:

  foreach my $key ( keys %ARGS ) {
    if ( $key =~ m/^edit_name_(\d+)$/ ) {
      my $num = $1; # captured from the regexp
      my $name = $ARGS{$key};
      $m->out( "<p>Edit name $num = $name</p>" );
    } elsif ( $key =~ m/^edit_type_(\d+)$/ ) {
      my $num = $1; # captured from the regexp
      my $type = $ARGS{$key};
      $m->out( "<p>Edit type $num = $type</p>" );
    }
  }

The second method is to generate hashes to play with:

  my %edit_name = ();
  my %edit_type = ();
  foreach my $key ( keys %ARGS ) {
    if ( $key =~ m/^edit_name_(\d+)$/ ) {
      $edit_name{$1} = $ARGS{$key};
    } elsif ( $key =~ m/^edit_type_(\d+)$/ ) {
      $edit_type{$1} = $ARGS{$key};
    }
  }

  # play with values
  foreach my $num ( sort { $a <=> $b } keys %edit_name ) {
    $m->out( "<br />Name number $num is " . $edit_name{$num} );
  }
  foreach my $num ( sort { $a <=> $b } keys %edit_type ) {
    $m->out( "<br />Type number $num is " . $edit_type{$num} );
  }

Of course the name and type might be related! In which case you might consider the following:

  my %edit = ();
  foreach my $key ( keys %ARGS ) {
    if ( $key =~ m/^edit_([^_]+)_(\d+)$/ ) {
      $edit{$2}->{$1} = $ARGS{$key};
    }
  }

  # now %edit contains a hash of rows. In each row
  #   is the type and name fields. e.g.
  # %edit = ( 1 => { name => 'John', type => 'student' },
  #           2 => { name => 'Lisa', type => 'teacher' }
  #         );
  $m->out( "<table>" );
  foreach my $row ( sort { $a <=> $b } keys %edit ) {
    if ( ! ( exists( $edit{$row}->{name} &&
             exists( $edit{$row}->{type} ) ) {
      die( "Missing field for row $row" );
    }
    $m->out( "<tr><td>" . $edit{$row}->{name} . "</td>"
             . "<td> . $edit{$row}->{type} . "</td></tr>"
           );
  }
  $m->out( "</table>" );

updated: cleaned up code