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From: jimmy@pyra.co.uk (Jimmy Aitken)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Removing associative array entries
Message-ID: <671199580.AA19806@flaccid>
Date: 9 Apr 91 12:19:41 GMT
Sender: news@pyra.co.uk (News system)
Reply-To: jimmy@pyra.co.uk (Jimmy Aitken)
Organization: Pyramid Technology Ltd, Farnborough, ENGLAND
Lines: 39

I have a list of stuff in an associative array, and as I process each
elemnt, I want to undefine it.  When I finish processing the array via
a key look up, the element is removed. This is done so that I have the
remaining entries left which need to be handled specially.  i.e.

while(<>) {
    last if /^end/;
    $ARRAY{$_}=1;
}

while(<>) {
    ($f1,$f2,$f3)=split(/"/,$_);
    if (defined($ARRAY{$f2})) {
	process it;
	undef $ARRAY{$f2};
    }
}

while(($key,$value)=each%ARRAY) {
    process $value;
}

In the case above, the entry in the array ($value) is undefined, but
the name of the element is still there.  Is there any way to remove
the name of the element sso it wont appear in the $key variable in the
above example?

I can get around the problem, by  doing a 'prcoess $key if
defined($value)', but I was wondering if there was a 'cleaner' way.

Thanks,

Jimmy
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