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From: vince@bcsaic.UUCP (Vince Skahan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: printing assoc array in non-alphabetical order
Message-ID: <46485@bcsaic.UUCP>
Date: 3 May 91 21:21:01 GMT
Organization: Boeing Aerospace and Electronics - Seattle
Lines: 95

[...sigh...hope the previous Cancels on this took effect
	and you only got one...]

I have an associative array sorting question (I think)...
but it might be more related to keys.

The question is "how can I get an associative
	array to print in a specified (by me) order that 
	is NOT either alphabetic or reversed-alphabetic ?"

The following fragment prints:
	net.apr
	net.feb 
	net.jan 
	net.mar

when I want
	net.jan 
	net.feb 
	net.mar 
	net.apr

how can I get what I'm looking for in the following
example ???

--------------------- example -------------------
%files=("net.jan",1,"net.feb",2,"net.mar",3,"net.apr",4);
foreach $item (sort keys %files)
{
	print "$item\n";
}
-------------------------------------------------

let me give some more details if it helps...

1. I have a number of files, each with individual lines that
begin with the month-of-the-year (or do so after I get
through with splitting the 1st item per line), and
the data looks like this:

#monthname hostname bytes-in bytes-out errors char-per-sec
Jan        myhost     9000    3333      2       221
(etc...for many lines)

2. there are individual file names "net.monthname" for each
	month of the year that have to be reported on 
	(but not necessarily processed) in "month-of-year order"

3. I am taking a given month's data, and summarizing it based
on an associative array by processing it something like the 
follows:

	if $bytes{$monthname} isn't defined, init all the
		individual $somethings{$monthname} to 0

	fill in the various $somethings{$monthname} with
	something like:	 $bytes_in{$monthname} += $2;

	calculate all the $monthname specific totals, rates,
	etc. that I want to generate.

what I want to do is:

1. open the files if they exist (no sweat, I made a list 
	of files "net.*" and didn't die on failure to open)
2. do "good" stuff with them (I can already do this part
	for a given filename and generate the assoc. array)
3. print the per-month totals as follows:

	filename	category1	category2...

	net.jan		$total1{$jan}	$total2{$jan}	
	net.feb		$total1{$feb}	$total2{$feb}	
	net.mar		$total1{$mar}	$total2{$mar}	
	   .
	   .
	   .
	net.dec		$total1{$dec}	$total2{$dec}	

	totals		(sum-of-above)	(sum-of-above)


the other way of looking at it, is given an associative array
	with a number of items in it, how do I get it to print
	in the desired order (which is NOT alphabetical) ?

any help would be appreciated and I'll share the real code via e-mail
if it'll help...

					Thanks...
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
                         Vince Skahan   
 vince@atc.boeing.com                  ...uw-beaver!bcsaic!vince
 (place in heaven assured...I finished my 3-yr-old's swing set)