Question

I have 7 arrays that are defined in the following manner:

my @array1 = ();
..
my @array7 = ();

and then:

$array1[0] = "text goes here";
..
$array7[0] = "text goes here";

There are about 25 elements) in each of the seven arrays, that is, $array1[0] to $array1[24]. I need to frequently change the content of these arrays in various scripts. And sometimes, because the order of the arrays is essential, I need to rearrange the order of the array index or delete the elements at a position. This is a real pain in the ass, as I need to change the index of all subsequent arrays. Just to make it clear, if I delete array1[12], then I need to change $array1[13] to $array1[12] and that for all 7 arrays and for all subsequent index positions (or move the content of array1[13] to array1[12], etc.)

So my question is, is it possible to impute the index of the arrays so that I could switch around the arrays position without having to correct each array index afterwards? Something like this:

$array1[$_] = "text 1 goes here";
..
$array7[$_] = "other text 1 goes here";

and then:

$array1[$_] = "text 2 goes here";
..
$array7[$_] = "other text 2 goes here";

where $_ would be replaced by 1 for the first index of each of the 7 arrays and by 2 for the next element of each of the 7 arrays… (up to 24 elements).

Is there a solution to this problem other than using an hash and Tie::Hash?

EDIT
ok, let me clarify. I am looking for a script maintenance solution, no for a solution about the output of the script. I need to change the script myself (by hand) frequently and I do not want to change the numbers indexing all 24 positions of all 7 arrays by hand whenever I change something in these arrays. So my question was, is there a way to have the script impute the numbers indexing all positions of all arrays?

Using push as mvp was suggesting would be a proper solution. Are there any other solutions that could involve loops or something rather than using push 7X24 times?

Answer 1

You can use this approach:

my @array1;
push @array1, "text 1 goes here";
push @array1, "other text 1 goes here";
# ...
# or you can use loop as well:
for my $i (1..10) {
    push @array1, "text 1 instance $i goes here";
}

# do it for another one:
my @array2;
push @array2, "text 2 goes here";
push @array2, "other text 2 goes here";
# ...

You can even do this (little bit nasty because of dynamic variables):

for my $i (1..7) {
    for my $j (1..24) {
         push @{"array$i"}, "text $i, instance $j goes here";
    }
}