advise on data-structure: perl data-type

advise on data-structure

I have to assign coordinates (right,left,top,bottom) to a number of objects residing in a 8 x 4 grid. First I wanted to create objects with get and set methods but cant find a way to name the objects the way I want to. I'm looping through the grid in two nested for-loops and wanted to create an object with the counter as an extension:
$asset_$counter = Asset->new();
That doesn't work because the variable-name is an address returned by the constructor.
So is this still the right way - OO? Would like that because it's handy. Or should I do something else .. e.g. creating a hash where each key points to an array of my values?

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The suggestion, by Adam314, to not use variably named variables is a good suggestion. And, if you have 'use strict' on (and you do 'use strict', right...) then you won't be able to use variables in that way.

If you want to use an OO approach, and have all the Accessor and and Getter methods maintained automagically for you, use inside-out objects from Class::Std (i highly recommend them for all/most OO perl programing). Below is a simple class setup and sample script that will do what we are talking about here. Read the Class::Std man page and/or Perl Best Practices to find out how to write custom methods and such...

david

### The package definition.  Save this as Asset.pm in your perl include
# directory.  On Windows c:\Perl\site\lib is a good place.
 
package Asset;
 
use strict;
use Carp;
use Class::Std;
 
{
    # Create the positional attibutes of this object:
    my %top     : ATTR( :name<top>    :default(0) );
    my %bottom  : ATTR( :name<bottom> :default(0) );
    my %right   : ATTR( :name<right>  :default(0) );
    my %left    : ATTR( :name<left>   :default(0) );
 
    # Create other attributes
    my %cost    : ATTR( :name<cost>    :default(0)     );
    my %region  : ATTR( :name<region>  :default('USA') );
    my %name    : ATTR( :name<name>    :default('')    );
 
 
}
1;
 
##### And then, in a perl script somewhere...
# Save the script below as testasset.pl (or any name really).
 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Asset;
 
 
my $asset = Asset->new();
 
$asset->set_top(22);
$asset->set_name("Widget");
 
 
my $name = $asset->get_name();
my $top  = $asset->get_top();
print "$name\'s Top Postion is:  $top\n";
 
 
### And, the output would be:
 
Widget's Top Postion is:  22

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advise on data-structure

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perl data-type

Perl Programming Language

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