http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=193318

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Im trying to find a deepequals function/method, something like
$b = dclone($a);
if (deepequals($a,$b) {
   print " $a $b are equal, one is a clone of the other\n";
}
is there such a beast on CPAN that I missed ?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
•Re: deepequals
by merlyn (Sage) on Aug 28, 2002 at 00:31 UTC
Re: deepequals
by sauoq (Abbot) on Aug 28, 2002 at 00:44 UTC

    Storable provides that through the $Storable::cannonical variable. Quoting from the documentation:

    Normally, Storable stores elements of hashes in the order they are stored internally by Perl, i.e. pseudo-randomly. If you set $Storable::canonical to some TRUE value, Storable will store hashes with the elements sorted by their key. This allows you to compare data structures by comparing their frozen representations (or even the compressed frozen representations), which can be useful for creating lookup tables for complicated queries.
    -sauoq
    "My two cents aren't worth a dime.";
    
Re: deepequals
by rinceWind (Monsignor) on Aug 28, 2002 at 09:46 UTC
    I did ask something similar before in Need a test for deep equality. I know that storable and Data::Dumper have been revamped in the mean time, but please look at my conclusions in that thread.

    Super Search is your friend.

    --rW