[Za-pm] Hashes

[Theunis De Klerk]

Hi Everyone,

I'm a newbie, especially to Perl.So could someone please explain what
hashes are and what they are used for. From what i see they are sort of
like multi demensional arrays . Is that right?

Muchly appreciated!!!
Theunis


On Thu, 2003-06-05 at 09:32, Spike wrote:
> At 2003/06/05 08:47 AM, Sean Carte wrote:
> >Chapter 4 of the Camel is a good place to start, or end, or go back to
> >repeatedly until it suddenly starts to make sense.
> 
> Oh yes! I know exactly what you mean. All the books seem to get too deep 
> into hashes too quick.
> 
> My advice is to just start trying to put something in a hash and get it out 
> again - it will make sense eventual - I promise.
> 
> In one of the reference books is says something like "There is no technical 
> limit to the number of dimensions in a hash array [hashes of hashes of 
> hashes ...] But most human programers stop at 3"
> 
> Start simple:-
> 
> %hash = (
>          car  => 1,
>          wife => 2,
>          dog => 4,
>          kids => 2
>          )
> 
> print "$hash{car}\n";   #  1  expected
> print "$hash{wife}\n;   #   2 expected
> 
> $hash{dog} = 6;
> 
> print "$hash{dog}\n";  #  6 expected
> 
> $hash{dog} ++;
> 
> print "$hash{dog}\n";  #  7 expected
> 
> foreach $key (keys %hash)
> {
>          print "The value for key $key is $hash{$key}\n";
> }
> 
> #  The value for key car is 1
> #  The value for key wife is 2
> #  etc. expected
> 
> 
> Remember that keys are unique so you can use a hash as a unique command.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Spike Hodge
> 
> UNIX Programmer
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