How to split a string into multiple hash keys in perl - perl

Question

I have a series of strings for example
my #strings;
$strings[1] = 'foo/bar/some/more';
$strings[2] = 'also/some/stuff';
$strings[3] = 'this/can/have/way/too/many/substrings';
What I would like to do is to split these strings and store them in a hash as keys like this
my %hash;
$hash{foo}{bar}{some}{more} = 1;
$hash{also}{some}{stuff} = 1;
$hash{this}{can}{have}{way}{too}{many}{substrings} = 1;
I could go on and list my failed attempts, but I don't think they add to the value to the question, but I will mention one. Lets say I converted 'foo/bar/some/more' to '{foo}{bar}{some}{more}'. Could I somehow store that in a variable and do something like the following?
my $var = '{foo}{bar}{some}{more}';
$hash$var = 1;
NOTE: THIS DOESN'T WORK, but I hope it only doesn't due to a syntax error.
All help appreciated.

Answer 1

Identical logic to Shawn's answer. But I've hidden the clever hash-walking bit in a subroutine. And I've set the final value to 1 rather than an empty hash reference.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use feature 'say';
use Data::Dumper;
my #keys = qw(
foo/bar/some/more
also/some/stuff
this/can/have/way/too/many/substrings
);
my %hash;
for (#keys) {
multilevel(\%hash, $_);
}
say Dumper \%hash;
sub multilevel {
my ($hashref, $string) = #_;
my $curr_ref = $hashref;
my #strings = split m[/], $string;
for (#strings[0 .. $#strings - 1]) {
$curr_ref->{$_} //= {};
$curr_ref = $curr_ref->{$_};
}
$curr_ref->{#strings[-1]} = 1;
}

Answer 2

You have to use hash references to walk down thru the list of keys.
use Data::Dumper;
my %hash = ();
while( my $string = <DATA> ){
chomp $string;
my #keys = split /\//, $string;
my $hash_ref = \%hash;
for my $key ( #keys ){
$hash_ref->{$key} = {};
$hash_ref = $hash_ref->{$key};
}
}
say Dumper \%hash;
__DATA__
foo/bar/some/more
also/some/stuff
this/can/have/way/too/many/substrings

Answer 3

Just use a library.
use Data::Diver qw(DiveVal);
my #strings = (
undef,
'foo/bar/some/more',
'also/some/stuff',
'this/can/have/way/too/many/substrings',
);
my %hash;
for my $index (1..3) {
my $root = {};
DiveVal($root, split '/', $strings[$index]) = 1;
%hash = (%hash, %$root);
}
__END__
(
also => {some => {stuff => 1}},
foo => {bar => {some => {more => 1}}},
this => {can => {have => {way => {too => {many => {substrings => 1}}}}}},
)

Answer 4

I took the easy way out w/'eval':
use Data::Dumper;
%hash = ();
#strings = ( 'this/is/a/path', 'and/another/path', 'and/one/final/path' );
foreach ( #strings ) {
s/\//\}\{/g;
$str = '{' . $_ . '}'; # version 2: remove this line, and then
eval( "\$hash$str = 1;" ); # eval( "\$hash{$_} = 1;" );
}
print Dumper( %hash )."\n";