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Hi all,

Can anyone tell me or point to a reference to know more about using
non-numeric indices for arrays?

If so, how can I use it for my applications?

Typical scenario would be database records, where I want my index to be
based off Last name . and would like to access the array as

$Record[$LastName][$Salary] = $1000;

This way I dont need to parse the entire list (myself) to find the
matching last name and then assign that record the salary value.

Thanks,
Murali

In article < .com>,
<> wrote:

: Can anyone tell me or point to a reference to know more about using
: non-numeric indices for arrays?
:
: If so, how can I use it for my applications?

Read about hashes in the perldata manpage.

$Record{$lastname}{salary} = 1234;

Hope this helps,
Greg
--
California is still the best place to start a small business. But you
have to start with a big business.
-- Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Simi Valley

wrote:

> Can anyone tell me or point to a reference to know more about using
> non-numeric indices for arrays?

Perl's arrays require numeric indices, so, it seems like you are out of
luck.

> If so, how can I use it for my applications?

Depends on your application.

> Typical scenario would be database records, where I want my index to be
> based off Last name . and would like to access the array as
>
> $Record[$LastName][$Salary] = $1000;

Well, that is not going to work. First, $1000 is likely to contain a
meaningless value as you probably did not have a regex match with at
least 1000 captures prior to this line. Second, $LastName and $Salary
are likely not integers.

On the other hand, in Perl, you could use a hash:

my %records;

$records{$last_name}{$salary} = '$10000';

But that's silly as well: I mean, what would $salary contain? Hmmm ...
How about:

$records{$last_name}{salary} = '$10000';

Please do visit

<URL:http://learn.perl.org/>

and read the posting guidelines for this group.

> This way I dont need to parse the entire list (myself) to find the
> matching last name and then assign that record the salary value.

This makes absolutely zero sense. What does any of this have to do with
parsing?

Sinan

wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Can anyone tell me or point to a reference to know more about using
> non-numeric indices for arrays?
>
> If so, how can I use it for my applications?
>
> Typical scenario would be database records, where I want my index to be
> based off Last name . and would like to access the array as
>
> $Record[$LastName][$Salary] = $1000;

You would use hashes for this. They also nicely work with the DBI
module's tools for selecting into a hash.

--
Rossz