[tpm] Breaking a string up into hash keys

[Uri Guttman]

On 04/14/2013 08:53 AM, Olaf Alders wrote:

> use Hash::Flatten qw( flatten );

you don't need that module if you just use a very obscure but valid perl 
trick call multidimensional hashes. this is from old perl4 days but 
still works. if you use a list as the key in a scalar hash lookup, the 
list is joined with $; (see perlvar) and used as a single key. $; 
defaults to "\034" which is not printable. note that that value is 
unlikely to be in any printable key so the joined string will be unique 
and work as a flat hash key.

so all you need to do is use that trick to generate the single level 
hash and also to access it.
>
> my $key = 'this::and::the::other::thing';
> $key =~ s/::/./g;

instead of s/// just do a split on ::

	my @keys = split /::/, $keys ;

	$flat{ @keys } = 'foo' ;

if that doesn't work because the array is put into scalar context, you 
can do the join directly:

	$flat{ join $;, @keys } = 'foo' ;

and stay away from string eval for any normal data manipulation. it is 
slow and dangerous and actually rarely needed. it is NOT needed here at all.

uri