Re: A good data structure to store INI files.

Marc Lucksch schrieb:
Maybe I'm an idiot here, but I can't figure this one out even if my life would depend on it:
Maybe I posted the question wrong, it is not about the INI parsers, I just didn't want to release another one...

Lets say I have this data structure, from an ini file, it cares for all the conditions that can happen (multiple sections, keys and values)

my $ini={
Ship=>[
{#First Ship
nickname=>[ #A key
['li_elite'] # value
],
fuse=>[ #multikey with multivalue
['intermed_damage_smallship01','0.000000','400'],
['intermed_damage_smallship02','0.000000','200'],

], #....
},{#Second Ship
nickname=>[
['li_elite2']
],fuse=>[
['intermed_damage_smallship01','0.000000','400'],
['intermed_damage_smallship02','0.000000','200'],

], #....
}, #A lot more 'Ships'
],Simple=>[
#A lot of Simples
],ship=>[
# 3 or 4 ships, sometime they are lowercase...
# That's a problem with this data model,
# Can't use Hash::Case::Preserve either,
# cause I would loose which ship's which.
],Pilot=>[
{
name=>[['pilot_corsair']],
}#Just one pilot entry
],
# lot more sections....
}

1. Problem:

I can't save the order the sections or keys came in, nor the names of them so I can't write an unmodified file out again. I would have to tie that structure.
I want to make is easily accessable:

$ini->{Pilot}->{name} instead of:
$ini->{Pilot}->[0]->{name}->[0]->[0].

for (@$ini) {
#in the order they came in, because a section can affect the
#following one. As seen in weapon_equip.ini, where [LODsomething.]
#before [Gun] affects the Gun LODs, I can't mix those up.
}
for (@{$ini->{Ships}}) {
#Return ships in order of appearance.
}

But I would need overload for that, and I could save it into an array for the order and a hash for quick lookup.

But I can't just return a hash with overload, because it wouldn't change my array on operations like

delete $ini->{newvalue}; (Change in array missing.
for (0 .. $#{$ini}) {
delete $ini->[$_] if something($_); #Change in Hash missing.
}
Which one do I trust now, hash or array?

or even

delete $ini->{Pilot};
$ini->{Pilot}=$otherpilot. #Order destroyed.

So I would have to return a tied hash, which gives me a lot of trouble with overload again. (See perldoc overload, last section or so)


.... No solution :( ...

Either I need a better way to save it, or I'm missing something here?

Marc "Maluku" Lucksch
.

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