Duplicate key reads on VMS::IndexedFile

[Kevin Hoffman]

Hi,   I tried using the VMS::IndexedFile on a key that allowed duplicates, but I get strange results.  The keys function returned the wrong data, and the each function never returns undef so an infinite loop ensues.   What would really be cool, if you could use some syntax like this:   @subset = @hash{ 'ABC' };   Which when used on a dup key, would return the set of records matching 'ABC'.  This is pretty much a long shot, since it would require the tie FETCH method to know it was in array context.  I've tried wantarray in a FETCH routine and it doesn't work.   Another idea might be to include the key criteria on the TIEHASH method.  That way you always tie to a subset of the data instead of the entire table.  Something like the following which would tie the hash to only those rows matching duplicate key value "ABC"   $mydupkey = 2; tie( %h, 'VMS::IndexedFile', [ 'filespec' => "TEST.DAT", 'key' => $mydupkey, 'keyval' => "ABC", 'keylen' => 3 ] );     Maybe the best yet is to provide a couple of methods for accessing data through duplicate keys.  Since duplicate keys really don't fit the HASH paradigm, it would probably be better to just provide a couple of methods that allowed you to access multiple rows.  Of course, you would probably have to disable FETCH, STORE, DELETE, FIRSTKEY, NEXTKEY since they don't really make sense.  Something like the following which would also access those rows matching duplicate key value "ABC"   $rv = $obj->First( "ABC", 3, $ctxt ); while( $rv ) {     $rv = $obj->Next("ABC",3, $ctxt ); }     thanks for listening... Kevin Hoffman