Perl Hash of Hash Output - perl

Question

I'm reading a file. I want a hash that gives me the first number of a line as a key to a hash of all the numbers of the rest of the line to 1.
I believe I'm adding the hash correctly, because Dumper prints correctly.
However, print "$first $secondID\n" is not giving me any output.
while (<FILE>) {
chomp $_;
if (/(\d+)\t(.+)/) {
$firstNum = $1;
#seconds = split(/\,/,$2);
foreach $following (#seconds) {
$Pairs->{$firstNum}{$following} = 1;
}
foreach $first (sort {$a <=> $b} keys %Pairs) {
print "$first\n";
%second = {$Pairs{$first}};
foreach $secondID (sort {$a <=> $b} keys %second) {
print "$first $secondID\n";
}
}
print Dumper($Pairs);
}
else {
print "ERROR\n";
}
}
Later on, given a pair of numbers I would like to look up to see whether $Pairs{$num1}{$num2} is defined. would I write
if(defined $Pairs{$num1}{$num2})
Or should I check the first key first. Then check the second key
if (defined $Pairs{$num1}) {
$temp = $Pairs{$num1};
if (defined $temp{$num2}) {
print "true\n;
}
}

Answer 1

You have a couple of errors. Firstly you seem to be unsure whether you are using %Pairs or $Pairs to store your hash, and secondly you have %second = {$Pairs{$first}}, which tries to assign a hash reference to the hash %second. Presumably you want my %second = %{ $Pairs{$first} }.
You should always use strict and use warnings at the start of all your Perl programs, and declare all variables at the point of first use using my. This will alert you to simple mistakes you could otherwise easily overlook, and would have shown up your use of both %Pairs and $Pairs in this program, as well as your attempt to assign a single value (a hash reference) to a hash.
Rather than copying the entire hash, you should save a reference to it in $seconds. Then you can dereference it in the following for loop.
Experienced Perl programmers would also thank you for using lower-case plus underscore for local (my) variables, and reserving capitals for package and class names.
This program works as you intended, and expects the file name as a command-line parameter:
use strict;
use warnings;
my %pairs;
while (<>) {
unless ( /(\d+)\s+(.+)/ ) {
print "ERROR\n";
next;
}
my $first_num = $1;
my #seconds = split /,/, $2;
foreach my $following (#seconds) {
$pairs{$first_num}{$following} = 1;
}
foreach my $first (sort { $a <=> $b } keys %pairs) {
print "$first\n";
my $second = $pairs{$first};
foreach my $second_id (sort { $a <=> $b } keys %$second) {
print "$first $second_id\n";
}
}
}

Answer 2

my %hash;
while ( <> ) {
my #numbers = split /\D+/;
my $key = shift #numbers;
#{$hash{$key}}{ #numbers } = ( 1 ) x #numbers;
}
# test it this way...
if ( $hash{ $num1 }{ $num2 } ) {
}

Answer 3

Use:
%second = %{$Pairs->{$first}};