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Postings from July 2001
Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com> wrote:
|> I too have often wanted something like this. Currently I do it by a tied
|> hash, but due to performance only do so when I run my script in a debug
|> mode.
I've done this type of thing as well, but it seems that with complex
systems working on complex data, the debugging doesn't always uncover
everything.
|> However I would disagree that reading a non-existant entry should croak.
My thinking here is that when you create the hash (and I'm mostly thinking
in a using-a-hash-as-an-object mode), you would pre-create all fields
you'll ever need:
sub Employee::New($$$)
{
my $class = shift;
my $lastname = shift;
my $firstname = shift;
my $ref = bless {
Family => $lastname,
Given => $firstname,
DOB => undef,
EmpNum => undef,
Manager => undef,
}, $class;
clamp %$ref, 1; ## only those keys listed above are ever used
return $ref;
}
This also helps toward documentation, since every time you want to add some
random key, you'll also have to go back and add it to the New() function.
Having them listed all there is the first step toward documenting them well.
If you really want to add another on the fly, you can easily do it with
my $prev = clamp %$ref, 0;
$ref->{NewKey} = 1;
clamp %$ref, $prev;
(it's just flipping a bit, so is very low impact).
Jeffrey
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