Understanding a hashref

[keithl]

Hi,.

Newbie dumb question time ! Could somebody either give me an iniots guide to hashrefs or point me in the direction of one ? I can not get my head around the structure.

I have sucked in an XML file using XML::Simple and can dump the data quite nicely to screen as per the following

$VAR1 = {
    'ORDER' => [
        {
            'ORDER_NUMBER' => 'W-21670-3',
            'DETAILS' => {
                'LOCATION' => 'WGBASLBA',
                'DATE' => '07/05/2006 12:30:19',
                'VENDOR_REF' => 'FI15374820 KNCL1023',
                'TYPE' => {},
                'MOD_LEVEL' => 'EQU-INSTL-CPE',
                'PART_NUMBER' => 'CIS-CAB-ETH-S-RJ45',
                'DOMAIN' => 'Equant Non-serialized',
                'SHIPPED_QTY' => '2',
                'SERIAL_NO' => {}
            }
        },
        {
            'ORDER_NUMBER' => 'W-21670-4',
            'DETAILS' => {
                'LOCATION' => 'WGBASLBA',
                'DATE' => '07/05/2006 12:31:25',
                'VENDOR_REF' => 'FI15374820 KNCL1023',
                'TYPE' => {},
                'MOD_LEVEL' => 'EQU-INSTL-ZFS',
                'PART_NUMBER' => 'SVP-CAB-RJ45-X',
                'DOMAIN' => 'Equant Non-serialized',
                'SHIPPED_QTY' => '1',
                'SERIAL_NO' => {}
            }
        },
        {
            'ORDER_NUMBER' => 'W-11206-1',
            'DETAILS' => {
                'LOCATION' => 'WGBASMAN',
                'DATE' => '03/02/2006 10:35:05',
                'VENDOR_REF' => 'PMAN354 FI14162655',
                'TYPE' => {},
                'MOD_LEVEL' => 'EQU-INSTL-CPE',
                'PART_NUMBER' => 'CIS-CISCO2610XM',
                'DOMAIN' => 'Equant Serialized',
                'SHIPPED_QTY' => '1',
                'SERIAL_NO' => ' FCZ095071BE'
            }
        }
    ]
};
 

I am having difficulty just starting to extract the data from the hashref now !
I want to be able to convert this data to a simple CSV output. - that bit I can do no problem if I just had the data available to me in standard scalars.

I guess my qwuestion is how to start to reference this data from within the script ?

Many Thanks

Keith

[KevinADC]

check out the first two tutorials on this page:

http://perldoc.perl.org/index-tutorials.html

[keithl]

Thanks Kevin,

That looks like exactly the kind of guide I've been searching for all day !!

Keith

[KevinADC]

yer welcome Keith ....