Thanks Dan and the rest of the list for helping hone my PERL skills. Below is the data structure I am using, I think it is a HoH -- Hash of Hash Did get that right ? :)
> Well 'better and correct' depends on what your design says, we cannot > tell that. They are doing different things, that I can tell you for > sure. So the question becomes, do you want to assign an empty anonymous > hash (hash ref) in the case that the key doesn't exist, or do you want > to assign the same value to the key in that case? # This is the data structure %bags_ordered = ( "bag-style-fur" => { price => 10, image_name => 'FIO-142b-small', quantity=> 2 }, "bag-style-leather" => { price => 12, image_name => 'GUC-208-small', quantity=> 5, }, ); .... What I was looking for was way to initialize the %bags_ordered and remove the 'unless exists'. Does this test do something that I am not seeing or understanding like prevent two 'keys' with different values? %bags_ordered =(); # ok %bags_ordered = {}; # not ok -- Reference found where even-sized list expected ...... @bags = param('handbag'); #CGI.pm ## foreach my $bag (@bags){ $bags_ordered{$bag} = {} unless exists $bags_ordered{$bag}; } ## # Is the code below -- better or correct? foreach my $bag (@bags){ $bags_ordered{$bag} = $bag unless exists $bags_ordered{$bag} } Thanks for your time Dave ( kora musician / audiophile / web master @ cora connection / Ft. Worth, TX, USA) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]