Hashes for what &*&*

[thendal]

Hi all!

Why we need to go for hashes ,I didn't understand the hash part ,I didn't used it.Can some one explain why this is there in perl.

I can do every thing with a array,

I believe array can do all the manipulation ,Then why we need an hash.

I don't know may be iam missing another advantage of perl.

Any brief explanation with examples really help me
thanks

Thendal

 

[luciddream]

well, its for name value pairs...

say you are parsing a form for example...


wouldn't it be nice to have the field name coincide with the value?

so instead of looping through an array and trying to figure out where $array[4] goes.. you can have

$hash{'name'} with a value.

plus there are performance differences...

they aren't useful all the time, but, they are very nice things to have. adam@aauser.com

 

[MikeLacey]

an ordinary array is indexed by number, which is ok

a hash is an array indexed by a string, useful for building lookup tables where indexing by a number wouldn't be the most natural thing to do.
Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com

 

[thendal]

Thanks guys,

But inreal time application i found it easier with arrays.

 

[MikeLacey]

<s> whatever works thendal
Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com