Need some quick perl help 1

[SgtB]

This is probably pretty easy, but I'm still trying to teach myself perl....so bear with me. Here's the code I've written. Its just a little exercise to help me better understand hashes, subroutines...still covering the basics.

In the first 'while' statement at the bottom,
"%hash = &input;", how can I modify that %hash so that every time the &input is called it changes the hash instead of essentially overwriting it.
I've tried $hash{$key,$value} = &input, but only get strange characters in the result.

As of right now, the while loops are working, and the I'm prompted to enter as many names as I want, but the result is only the last key/value I entered. How would I write it so that the %hash would be modified every time the loop runs instead of a new %hash being created every time.

use strict;
my %hash;
my $key;
my $value;

sub input {
    my $employee;
    my $title;
    my %hash;
    print "Please type employee name.\n";
    chomp($employee = <STDIN>);
    print &quot;Please type employee title.\n&quot;;
    chomp($title = <STDIN>);
    %hash = ($employee => $title);
}

sub choice {
    print &quot;Would you like to add a person? yes or no.\n&quot;;
    chomp(my $response = <STDIN>);
    if ($response eq &quot;yes&quot;) {
        return 1;
    } else {
        return 0;
      }
}

while (&choice == 1) {
    %hash = &input;         # THIS IS THE PROBLEM LINE
}
while (($key, $value) = each %hash) {
    print &quot;$key is the $value.\n&quot;;
}

Any ideas?
Thanks! ________________________________________
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[MikeLacey]

Ok.

Couple of ideas for you.

Only declare %hash the once, you don't need to declare it inside your input() function.

Return two values from your input function, like this:

return($employee, $title);

and then call it like this:

while (&choice == 1) {
($emp, $ttle) = input();
$hash{$emp} = $ttle;
}

Also - If you add the line 'use warnings;' after 'use strict;' it will warn you about variables with the same name that "hide" one another, like when you declare %hash in a function when it's already defined. Mike

Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at faq219-2884

 

[SgtB]

Hey great! Thanks for the help! ________________________________________
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http://www.security-forums.com