Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days, Second Edition

An Example: More Names

On Day 5, we had a simple example that read in names (first and last), and then split those names into a hash of names keyed by the last name. On Day 6, both in the body of the lesson and in the exercises, we used the <> operator to read those names into a hash from an external file. Let's extend the names script here so that it doesn't just read the names into a hash, it also does something with those names. This version of the names script, morenames.pl, adds a large while loop that gives you a list of four options:

• Sort and print the names list by last name

• Sort and print the names list by first name

• Search for first or last name

• Quit

If you choose any of the options to search or sort the list, the program repeats and allows ...