[ILUG] [OT] perl question...

[Niall O Broin]

On Thursday 15 July 2004, Declan.Grady at nuvotem.com (Declan Grady) wrote:


>I have two arrays,  @openitems, and @customernames.
>I need to create a new array which will take all the openitems, and lookup
> a customer name in the @customernames array, based on the customercode,
> which is common to both arrays.
>
>i.e.
>@openitems is:
>code, type, value, date, ref, ... etc
>
>@customernames is:
>code, name

Arrays are lists, indexed by number. So what exactly do you have as the
contents of your arrays - comma separated strings? references to something
else (I doubt this, but . . .)?  i.e. how are you storing in @openitems all of
code, type, value, date, ref, ... etc  because an array has only an index, and
a value - but that value can be a string, which you can be parsing to get
those things, or a reference to a has, or  . . .

>I guess its something to do with a hash, but I guess I dont fully 
>understand how that works.

Hashes are like arrays, but instead of being indexed by a number, they are
indexed by a string. Probably the answer to your problem does involve the use
of hashes.




Niall