Help on a hash tab

[nightJohnBoy]

Hi guys,
I need a light help on create a perl tool for work.
Basically I have a file that I want to read into a hash table that will costing of the following.

Identifier/Code, Period, Unit Charge, Min charge, Fixed Charge

an example record could be:
4417862,Evening, 0.01,0.00,0.00
4417862,Daytime, 0.03,0.054,0.00


I will then read in a new file that will check against the identifier and period and allow me to select the unit charge, min charge and fixed charge. Which will aid in the calculation.

Its been ages since I have done anything in perl and I am a little rusty.

Thanks in advance.
John

 

[chazoid]

You'd probably want to use a hash of hashes for this.. the structure would look like:

%identifiers = (
    
    4417862 => {
        period          => "Evening",
        unit_charge     => 0.01,
        min_charge      => 0.00,
        fixed_charge    => 0.00
    },
    
    4417862 => {
        period          => "Daytime",
        unit_charge     => 0.03,
        min_charge      => 0.054,
        fixed_charge    => 0.00
    },
);

to print the period for identifier 4417862, you'd use:

print $identifiers{4417862}{period};

check perldoc perldsc for more on this and how to populate the hash dynamically (Generation of a HASH OF HASHES)

 

[nightJohnBoy]

ah-ha its all coming back to me now. fred, barny and wilma.

Thanks. This is going to be a nice development.

 

[KevinADC]

first three tutorials on this page cover complex data structures:

http://perldoc.perl.org/index-tutorials.html

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- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!