Hello. In my effort to improve my perl writing, I was going to take some of my own advice and stop trying to find reasons to not use something. With that in mind, I finally decided to look into Text_CSV_XS to replace my hand rolled flat file processor. I gravitated right to the function csv in the module as it looked easier to use. However, I came upon a problem. In the POD it says that when key is set, headers is set to auto, so the headers I set would not work.

So, other than going through every flat file I have and adding the headers, can anyone think of a way to work around? I have so very many flat files and could possibly miss a few, so adding headers in now would be problematic.

What I want is a hash of hashes with the first item on each line to be the key to the hash along with being a named value in the hash.

Is there maybe someone who would hold my hand as I try to work through the method in Text::CSV_XS?

My data

Crystal Skull|Stargate SG-1, Crystal Skull;The Librarian: Return to Ki
+ng Soloman's Mines;Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Spear of Destiny|The Librarian: Quest for the Spear;Hellboy;Constantin
+e
Book or Key of Soloman|The Librarian: Return to King Soloman's Mines;S
+eason of the Witch
Necronomicon|H.P. Lovecraft
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My code

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use Text::CSV_XS qw(csv);

my $file = '/home/me/Documents/www/files/data/Miscellany/Magic_items.t
+xt';
open(my $fh, '<', $file) || die "Can't open $file $!";

my $list = csv (
  in => $file,
  sep_char => '|',
  headers => ['item', 'seen in'],
  key => ['item'],
);

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper $list;
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My result

Use of uninitialized value in anonymous hash ({}) at /home/me/perl5/li
+b/perl5/x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi/Text/CSV_XS.pm line 1223, <$fh>
+ line 4.
Use of uninitialized value in anonymous hash ({}) at /home/me/perl5/li
+b/perl5/x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi/Text/CSV_XS.pm line 1223, <$fh>
+ line 4.
Use of uninitialized value in anonymous hash ({}) at /home/me/perl5/li
+b/perl5/x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi/Text/CSV_XS.pm line 1223, <$fh>
+ line 4.
Use of uninitialized value in anonymous hash ({}) at /home/me/perl5/li
+b/perl5/x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi/Text/CSV_XS.pm line 1223, <$fh>
+ line 4.
$VAR1 = {
          '' => {
                  'seen in' => 'H.P. Lovecraft',
                  'item' => 'Necronomicon'
                }
        };
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Update: This is as far as I have gotten with the method version.

$csv = Text::CSV_XS->new ({
  sep_char              => '|',
  quote_char            => undef,
  blank_is_undef        => 1,
  empty_is_undef        => 1,
  allow_whitespace      => 1,
});
[download]