[tpm] Populating an unfixed number of hash elements

[Richard Dice]

Hi Madison,

Could you re-iterate (in a cleaner fashion) what your input is and what your
desired output is?  As for the output, you can provide Data::Dumper dumps of
the data structures you want.

Could I consider your data to be:

some::string::of::elements
> some::string
> some::string::of::other::elements
> another::set::of::keys
>

?

(I will loop through this using a while (<>) loop in whatever programming I
cook up.)

Cheers,
 - Richard

On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 11:43 AM, Madison Kelly <linux at alteeve.com> wrote:

> I am not sure that the subject makes a lot of sense, sorry. :)
>
> In a few places I take a string that can have an arbitrary number of
> elements in it that I use as hash keys. I split up this string and feed
> in a passed value to a hash reference using the given hash elements.
>
> So far, I've not found an effective way to do this, so I've resorted to
> a frighteningly dumb solution "that works". However, it's not at all
> flexible and frankly, I am ashamed of it. So please, TPM, help me regain
> some dignity! :)
>
> I need a way to /intelligently/ create a hash entry. I've tried
> 'eval'ing it into existence but that never seems to work for some reason...
>
> Thanks!!
>
> Madi
>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> Here is an example of what I am trying to do:
>
> my %hash=();
>
> $string1="some::string::of::elements";
> $string2="some::string";
> $string3="some::string::of::other::elements";
> $string4="another::set::of::keys";
>
> $self->_to_hash(\%hash, $string1, "a value");
> $self->_to_hash(\%hash, $string2, 12);
> $self->_to_hash(\%hash, $string3, "a really long string that takes up
> pages");
> $self->_to_hash(\%hash, $string4, "something else again.");
>
> sub _to_hash
> {
>        my $self=shift;
>        my $hashref=shift;
>        my $keystring=shift;
>        my $value=shift;
>
>        my @key=split /::/, $hashref;
>
>        # Here is where it gets... undignified...
>        if (@key==5)
>        {
>          $$hashref{$key[0]}{$key[1]}{$key[2]}{$key[3]}{$key[4]}=$value;
>        }
>        elsif (@key==4)
>        {
>          $$hashref{$key[0]}{$key[1]}{$key[2]}{$key[3]}=$value;
>        }
>        elsif (@key==3)
>        {
>          $$hashref{$key[0]}{$key[1]}{$key[2]}=$value;
>        }
>        elsif (@key==2)
>        {
>          $$hashref{$key[0]}{$key[1]}=$value;
>        }
>        elsif (@key==1)
>        {
>          $$hashref{$key[0]}=$value;
>        }
>        else
>        {
>          croak "Unsupported number of kash keys.\n";
>        }
>
>        return();
> }
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