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array/dictionary advice needed

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Subject: array/dictionary advice needed
From: Mark Guertin <guertin at brucemaudesign dot com>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 12:11:48 -0500
Hi Everyone

With all the discussions on collections/arrays/dictionaries I need some advice ...

What I am looking for is a simple (enough) way of tracking things like this:

"1","Some Data","Other Data"

where 1 = (my) row ID (not the default index ones but a reference to a row ID from my database) "Some Data" and "Other Data" are pretty self explanatory .. multiple pieces of data.

From what I've read so far I thought that collections where a good point for me to start, but now I see that collections should not be used and instead dictionaries should be, but from what i can read here they don't work the same way ... with a collection you could sort of do what i was looking for.

Aside from the hash table lookups is there an advantage to using dictionaries for this?

I'm still a little bit perplexed that there is not more advanced array handling for RB :( I'm very used to being able to use simple mixed arrays with definable keys to store my (usually small) datasets for manipulation, like ( from php):

foo(0)=array{
 "rowid" => "1",
 "name" => "Mark",
 "occupation" => "geek"
}

This sort of behaviour ... so I guess the question is can I get this sort of functionality without having to go to 3rd party addons? I've always avoided 3rd party wherever possible in building my solutions. You can't account for 3rd parties working, or not working in updated versions, etc and would rather stick to core features of the language that (hopefully) stick around for some time and are backwards compatible.

Thanks in advance for any advice

Mark


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