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Hi, I have a simple problem, which I have solved, but
my solution feels ugly to me. Any improvements please?

A web form contains a list of project names. And for
some projects there are mailing lists, which I need
to display if the matching project has been selected.

Some project names begin with the same string, like
"p1881_aq_" and "p1881". In those cases only the longest
match should be taken. Here is how I tried to solve it:

# put the longest keys first, to make them win

my @KEYS = qw( p1881_aq_ p1881_ p1972_ p1981_ p2311_ );

my %MAIL = (p1881_aq_ => {name => 'Project Aqua',
mail => ''},
p1881_ => {name => 'Project Alpha',
mail => ''},
p1972_ => {name => 'Project Beta',
mail => ''},
p1981_ => {name => 'Project Gamma',
mail => ''},
p2311_ => {name => 'Project Theta',
mail => ''},
);

......
for my $p (@selected_projects) {
for my $k (@KEYS) {
if (0 == index $p, $k) {
printf q{<A HREF="MAILTO:%s">%s</A>},
$MAIL{$k}->{mail}, $MAIL{$k}->{name};
last;
}
}
}

A. Farber wrote:

> Hi, I have a simple problem, which I have solved, but
> my solution feels ugly to me. Any improvements please?
>
> A web form contains a list of project names. And for
> some projects there are mailing lists, which I need
> to display if the matching project has been selected.
>
> Some project names begin with the same string, like
> "p1881_aq_" and "p1881". In those cases only the longest
> match should be taken. Here is how I tried to solve it:
>
> # put the longest keys first, to make them win
>
> my @KEYS = qw( p1881_aq_ p1881_ p1972_ p1981_ p2311_ );
>
> my %MAIL = (p1881_aq_ => {name => 'Project Aqua',
> mail => ''},
> p1881_ => {name => 'Project Alpha',
> mail => ''},
> p1972_ => {name => 'Project Beta',
> mail => ''},
> p1981_ => {name => 'Project Gamma',
> mail => ''},
> p2311_ => {name => 'Project Theta',
> mail => ''},
> );
>
> .....
> for my $p (@selected_projects) {
> for my $k (@KEYS) {
> if (0 == index $p, $k) {
> printf q{<A HREF="MAILTO:%s">%s</A>},
> $MAIL{$k}->{mail}, $MAIL{$k}->{name};
> last;
> }
> }
> }
>

Your solution looks pretty good to me. A couple of debatable things
that might make it more "Perlish": One could make the search for keys
into a regexp, and one could interpolate the variables into the print
string rather than using printf:

$KEYS=qr/^(p1881_aq_|p1881_|p1972_|p1981_|p2311_);
...
for my $p (@selected_projects){
if($p=~$KEYS){
print "<A HREF=\"MAILTO:$MAIL{$1}->{mail}\">$MAIL{$1}->{name}</A>";
}
}

--
Bob Walton
Email: http://bwalton.com/cgi-bin/emailbob.pl

Bob Walton wrote:

> print "<A HREF=\"MAILTO:$MAIL{$1}->{mail}\">$MAIL{$1}->{name}</A>";

using qq() you don't need to escape the " inside, or you can use single
quotes for the href value.

--
John MexIT: http://johnbokma.com/mexit/
personal page: http://johnbokma.com/
Experienced Perl programmer available: http://castleamber.com/

A. Farber wrote:
>
> # put the longest keys first, to make them win
>
> my @KEYS = qw( p1881_aq_ p1881_ p1972_ p1981_ p2311_ );
>
> my %MAIL = (p1881_aq_ => {name => 'Project Aqua',

A bit of a maintenance problem? Why not let Perl generate @KEYS?

my @KEYS = sort { length($b) <=> length($a) } keys %MAIL;

> for my $p (@selected_projects) {
> for my $k (@KEYS) {

last if (length($k) < length(p)); # Useful if you have a lot

> if (0 == index $p, $k) {

--
-*- Just because I've written it here doesn't -*-
-*- mean that you should, or I do, believe it. -*-