Question

I am creating a hash of hashes and trying to search or do pattern matching.

Hash is

$hash{$var1}{$var2}{$var3}=$value; #where $var1 =1_1 : $var2 =2_1; $var3 =3,4; 

and i am trying to do a pattern matching with key var3
here $var4 can change values

for (sort keys %{$hash{'1'}{$var4}}) { # var4=2_1 : can also be 2_2 and so on 
    if ($_ =~ m/3,.*/) {  # here 
        $new = $_;        # here new should get the value 3,4
    }
}      

The problem I am stuck with is that unless I do the following

for (sort keys %{$hash{'1'}{'2'}})

I cannot sort the keys ; In short cannot replace 2 with a variable.

Answer 1

Have you tried using a nested loop? You’ll need something like this: sort the $var4 keys before going deeper down to access the values you need.

for my $var4 (sort keys %{$hash{'1'}}) { # var4=2_1 : can also be 2_2 and so on 
    # you can also filter the var4 keys here if you want

    for my $var3 (keys %{$hash{1}{$_}}) {
        if ($var3 =~ m/3,.*/) {  # here 
            $new = $var3;        # here new should get the value 3,4
        }
    }
}