Perl Cookbook

Chapter 5. Hashes

Introduction

Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.

—Larry Wall

People and parts of computer programs interact in all sorts of ways. Single scalar variables are like hermits, living a solitary existence whose only meaning comes from within the individual. Arrays are like cults, where multitudes marshal themselves under the name of a charismatic leader. In the middle lies the comfortable, intimate ground of the one-to-one relationship that is the hash. (Older documentation for Perl often called hashes associative arrays , but that’s a mouthful. Other languages that support similar constructs sometimes use different terms for them; you may hear about hash tables, tables, dictionaries, mappings, or even alists, depending on the language.)

Unfortunately, this isn’t a relationship of equals. Hashes are an of relationship, like saying “Andy is the boss of Nat,” “The blood pressure of our patient is 112/62,” and “The name of journal ISSN 1087-903X is The Perl Journal.” Hashes only give convenient ways to access values for “Nat’s boss” and “1087-903X’s name”; you can’t ask “Whose boss is Andy?” Finding the answer to that question is a recipe in this chapter.

Fortunately, hashes have their benefits, just like relationships. Hashes are a built-in data type in Perl. Their use reduces many complex algorithms to simple variable accesses. They are also fast and convenient ways to build indices and quick lookup ...