> On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Hanson, Robert wrote:
> > Hashes are slower than arrays, but I don't
> > usually worry about those things unless
> > performance is an issue. I recommend (others
> > will no doubt have different opinions) that
> > you use a hash when it makes your life easier...
> > in this case it might not, but that is up to you
> > to decide. The only time I do things the
> > "harder" way is if it saves a good amount of
> > run time.
>
> It would make my life much easier and since the
> amount of records will not be in the thousands, I
> guess I will go that route.
You might prefer the form:
my ($first, $second, $third) = split;
which is list assignment. Rarely do you really need a hash
for this purpose, usually either an array or individual
scalars are most appropriate.
If you need to return a hash, then the following structure
works nicely:
my @values = split;
my %hash = ( first => $value[0],
second => $value[1],
third => $value[2]
);
Look, it even documents what each element means!
Alternatively, you could try:
use constant first => 0;
use constant second => 1;
use constant third => 2;
my @values = split;
print $value[third];
This last approach is more appropriate for use within
packages/classes, since those constants should appear at
the top of the script - preferably not far from the code
that it relates to.
>
> > By the way, you are using an array and *not*
> > a list.# It might seem like they are synonymous
> > but they really aren't. And array is a Perl data
> > type and a list is just a list of data. There was
> > a good article in the Perl Journal differentiating
> > between them, it might also be on Perl.com.
>
> Thank you for the correction, I will check for the
> article.
Jonathan Paton
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