Short answer: Yes.
Medium answer: Sort of, but they need to references to arrays not arrays
Long answer:
A hash (common term for associative array) contains a scalar key and a
scalar value. A scalar value can be (not inclusive) a number, a string,
or a reference. Since we can generate a reference to an array and a
reference can be stored in a scalar and a scalar can be the value of a
hash then yes, you can store arrays as the values of a hash:
<code>
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my %hash = (
'array1' = [0, 1, 2, "three", four], #create a reference to an
#anonymous array of five
#values
'array2' = ['hello', 'world'] #ditto, but two values
);
push @{$hash{'array1'}}, "five"; #push a value onto the first array
</code>
On 26 Jun 2001 13:29:39 +0100, Paul Murphy wrote:
>
>
> Hi all.
>
> Is there any way in Perl to set up an associative array of normal arrays?
>
> So the key would be an arbitrary string, and the value for instance would be an
>array of numbers.
>
> I'll explain what I want to do, as their may well be better ways:
>
> Suppose I have a file like this:
>
> Hello; 1
> Goodbye; 1
> Hello; 2
> Hello; 2
> Hello; 3
> Goodbye; 2
> Hello; 1
> Goodbye; 1
> etc...
>
> Basically, a string, with an associated number. I want to count the amount of
>Hello's with a 1 next to them, and the amount of Hello's with a 2 next to them etc.
>
> Only, I don't know what the string in the file is going to be up front.
>
> I can count the instances of each string easily enough, ie, how many hello's there
>are, but I can't see how to count Hello 2's.
>
> I can explain this more clearly if required, as I read it and it only barely makes
>sense to me.
>
> Thanks for any tips,
>
> Paul.
>
>
>
>
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