Exercises, examples and other material relating to training module P217. This topic is presented on public courses Perl Programming, Perl for Larger Projects, Perl bootcamp, Learning to program in Perl, Perl Programming

As well as lists and hashes, Perl has the capability of handling collections of data in more complex structures; you're limited only by your ingenuity! A study of these more complex structures is vital if you're to understand how Object Orientation works in Perl, and the subject is equally essential if you're going to be doing serious data munging without using objects.

Articles and tips on this subject		updated
3444	Take the dog on a lead - do not carry her. Perl references. Taking the dog out for a walk? It's much easier to use a lead than to carry the whole dog. And ... in a similar vein ... when you're passing some data into a named block of code (a.k.a. sub, subroutine, function, procedure, command, method, macro) when programming, it's much more efficient to pass ...	2013-01-01
3906	Taking the lead, not the dog, for a walk. When I say that "I'm taking the dogs for a walk", I don't literally carry the dogs for a walk - they walk themselves and I just hold the leads. Statement of the obvious? Yes! But you would be surprised how many programmers pass complete full data structures into named blocks of code - "subroutines" ...	2012-11-03
3577	How to do multidimensional arrays (or rather lists and hashes) in Perl In Perl, you can have a list of lists, a hash of hashes, a hash of lists or a list of hashes - in effect, two dimensional arrays but with much more flexibility.And where you can have two dimensional arrays, you can go further and have 3, 4, or more dimensions - you are limited only by your ingenuity. With ...	2012-01-28
3406	Not multidimentional arrays - but lists of lists. Much more flexible. Perl! In Perl, you don't have multidimensional structures as such - you have list and hashes ... and you can have lists of hashes, hashes of lists and hashed of hases too. Which give you almost all of the benefits of multi dimensional structures, but with few of the limitations. And they can be set up in ...	2011-08-26
3399	From fish, loaves and apples to money, plastic cards and BACS (Perl references explained) Money's useful stuff. Before money, transactions were undertake on a barter system; if I wanted a loaf of bread I might exchange it for a fish. If I was wanting to book passage on tthe stagecoach from the George in Melksham to London, I would have to take ia bushel of apples into my local travel agent, ...	2011-08-20
3105	Adventure with references to lists and lists of references I remember an old game I used to play on DEC 10 (and VAX and PDP-11) computers - the original adventure game, perhaps ([see here]) which was pure text / instruction based and you traveled North, South, East and West through the colossal cave. And there was one are - the maze - where you could get rather ...	2011-01-03
3118	Arrays of arrays - or 2D arrays. How to program tables. It's shorthand when you're learning a new programming language to ask "how does it handle multiple dimension arrays" ... but in practise very few languages actually support true multidimensional arrays these days, and in those which do you might be well advised to use an alternative that's more flexible. What ...	2011-01-03
3072	Finding elements common to many lists / arrays "What do these lists have in common". That's a common question - but what does the person asking it actually mean? Is (s)he looking for items that occur in all of the lists, but perhaps at different positions? For items that occur in two or more of the lists? For items that occur at the same position ...	2010-11-27
2996	Copying - duplicating data, or just adding a name? Perl and Python compared When you copy a list in Perl, you're duplicating the data and you end up with two distinct copies ... but when you copy a list in Python, you're copying the reference so that you end up with two names for the same variable - almost like an alias. So in Perl - with two different copies - you end up with ...	2010-10-30
3007	Setting up a matrix of data (2D array) for processing in your program When you're reading and processing data, it often comes in the form of a series of records, with each record being split into a series of fields, and you'll often want to be going through the data several times, looking at different rows and colums, sorting them, comparing them, and so on. If the amount ...	2010-10-21
2877	Further more advanced Perl examples I've uploaded a further batch of new examples (that makes around 40 in total!) from the private Perl course that I ran from Wednesday through Saturday last week - many of them adding a new twist on to previous examples. If you read a comment below and thing "that's what I'm looking for an example of", ...	2010-07-30 (longer)
2840	Just pass a pointer - do not duplicate the data When you want to pass a big bundle of data - such as an array - into a function, it's far more efficient to pass in just a single value in the form of a pointer to the array. That's the address in memory at which the array starts and that single value can provide the key to all the data without havig ...	2010-06-30
2241	Perl references - $$var and \$var notations In Perl, if I write: $stuff = "Porridge"; then I'm setting up a variable to contain the value "Porridge". If I write: $stuffat = \$stuff; then I'm setting up a variable to contain the ADDRESS OF the variable $stuff. So if $stuff was in memory at (hex)fe80 ... then $stuffat will be assigned that value ...	2009-06-22
1514	Autovivification - the magic appearance of variables in Perl Here's a one line perl program that does nothing but set up a variable ... except that it does a lot! $p[7]{john}{paul}[9] = 1;   __END__   A list called @p. Elements 0 to 6 are null, and element 7 is a reference to a hash ...   That hash contains a single member, key is "john" and the ...	2008-01-21
43	Hash of lists in Perl Here's a short program that reads data into a hash of lists, sorts the keys and displays output data - a simple Perl program showing powerful capabilities of the language. while () { my ($name,@temporary) = split; $want{$name} = \@temporary; } foreach $person (sort keys %want) ...	2006-06-05

2ds	Setting up a list of lists (like a 2D array)
2tiny	A list of lists - autovivification
ar2	Combining lists - list of lists v one long list
ar3	Rekeying data
ar3.cgi	Rekeying data / presenting it on a web page
ar4	Reading a data file into a structure
clutter	Finding items common to a number of liats
d2	Passing list, passing reference to list comparison
d3	Collection of collections (i.e. 2D array)
deal	A list of lists - dealing a pack of cards
deal2	List of lists - flexible example
haha	A hash of hashes
hali	Example of a hash of lists
hohum	hash of list of hashes
lili	lists of lists - like a multidimensional array
lili2	List of lists
lilo	Collections and references to collections
m2	Passing a reference to a hash
menu	Passing a reference to a list
multikey	A Hash of lists - a more complex example
rain	Setting up a hash of lists
ref2	References - the fundamentals
refs	References - a first demo
revise	Revision of reference notations in Perl
rn2	Pushing a list v pushing a reference to a list
rq2d	Setting up a hash of lists
rrr	Setting up a list of lists (like a 2D array) from a file
show_acc	Setting up a list of lists
slush	Setting up a list of lists in Perl

Two students on a public Perl course in Melksham