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From: emv@ox.com (Ed Vielmetti)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: constructing tables (was alarm())
Message-ID: <EMV.90Dec2171403@crane.aa.ox.com>
Date: 3 Dec 90 01:14:03 GMT
References: <3294@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de> <109564@convex.convex.com>
	<EMV.90Nov30194551@poe.aa.ox.com> <109679@convex.convex.com>
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In-Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM's message of 1 Dec 90 20:23:59 GMT

In article <109679@convex.convex.com> tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:

   I can at least cut down on one split and the cost of storing it
   all as a string.  Put the table at end of the program past a __END__
   symbol and load in in by referencing <DATA>.

this is what I end up with once I'm done.  one of the (unstated)
requirements is to have there be only data and not code in the file,
so I'm willing to absorb the subroutine call overhead:

require 'table.pl';
while (<DATA>) { &table'simple($_, *array)  } ;	
__END__
key1	value1
key2	value2

this works really nice, because I don't have to worry about getting
the syntax of the associative array down exactly right in every
pass.  the table can be updated quite easily just by appending to
the file rather than inserting something in the middle too.  and
since I have a couple of tables that are the same, the code can sit
in a package off somewhere else.

table.pl looks like this, with various other types of table handling
(multiple keys, multiple values, escaping stuff in, etc) defined as
I need them.

# table.pl.  load in various types of tables.
package table;

sub table'simple {
	local($_, *ary) = @_;
	if (!/^[ \t]$/) {
		($key,$value) = split;
		$ary{$key} = $value;
	}
	1;
}

thanks.

--Ed


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