How can I store multiple values in a Perl hash table?

Question

Up until recently, I've been storing multiple values into different hashes with the same keys as follows:

%boss = (     "Allan"  => "George",     "Bob"    => "George",     "George" => "lisa" );  %status = (     "Allan"  => "Contractor",     "Bob"    => "Part-time",     "George" => "Full-time" ); 

and then I can reference $boss("Bob") and $status("Bob") but this gets unwieldy if there's a lot of properties each key can have and I have to worry about keeping the hashes in sync.

Is there a better way for storing multiple values in a hash? I could store the values as

        "Bob" => "George:Part-time" 

and then disassemble the strings with split, but there must be a more elegant way.

Answer 1

This is the standard way, as per perldoc perldsc.

~> more test.pl %chums = ( "Allan" => {"Boss" => "George", "Status" => "Contractor"},            "Bob" => {"Boss" => "Peter", "Status" => "Part-time"} );  print $chums{"Allan"}{"Boss"}."\n"; print $chums{"Bob"}{"Boss"}."\n"; print $chums{"Bob"}{"Status"}."\n"; $chums{"Bob"}{"Wife"} = "Pam"; print $chums{"Bob"}{"Wife"}."\n";  ~> perl test.pl George Peter Part-time Pam