From: "Jan E." <lists@...>
Date: 2012-07-11T02:09:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Array in an array - how to assign to individual array?

Champak Ch wrote in post #1068162:
> But having separate global arrays for array1 and array2 will enable me
> to access the data anywhere, even if the hash keeps changing.

What exactly keeps changing? What might a different version of myhash 
look like? And what are the actual data behind this all?

To me myhash looks like a table with "array1" and "array2" being the 
columns and the hashes being the rows. And now you want "snapshots" of 
the columns at a certain point of time.

If that's the case, you should actually use a table object as a model 
for the data. Internally you might store the data as a hash of the form

{
  "column_name_1" => [value_11, value_12, ...],
  "column_name_2" => [value_21, value_22, ...],
  ...
}

This would also allow you to easily access the columns.

I think having nested hashes or arrays is almost always a bad idea, 
because they're hard to understand, hard to process and unsafe. It's 
mostly better to have a specialized object, which encapsulates the data 
and enforces a certain format.

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