http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=1047846


in reply to Re^2: How to create a two dimensional queue in Perl
in thread How to create a two dimensional queue in Perl

I'm assuming that these aren't priority queues - just items in whatever order they've been added into the queues. So here's how to go about it.
# Start with an empty master queue. my @master; # Build a sub queue. Note that this is a array *reference*. my $subqueue = [ 1, 2, 3, 4]; # add it to the queue. push() puts it at the tail of the queue. push @master, $subqueue; # Now let's create a couple more sub queues and add them. push @master, [5, 6, 7]; # Some high-priority-items we'll stick at the front of the master: unshift @master, [-1, 0]; # Now let's run the queue. We look at the master. If there are no item +s remaining, # the queue is empty. Otherwise, process the leading sub queue. while (@master) { # If the leading sub queue is empty, discard it, and start over with + the rest of # the (now possibly empty) master queue. while ( @{ $master[0] } ) { my $item = shift @{ $master[0] }; print $item, " "; } # We arrive here when the sub queue is empty. Discard the empty sub +queue. shift @master; # Move to the next line so we can see we switched sub queues. print "\n" } print "\n";
The output will be
-1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Obviously this is a toy program, but it serves to demonstrate the basic array operations and tests that are needed to manage a queue of queues. More complex operations (like priority queuing, etc.) are left as an exercise. (I'd probably switch the plain scalar values for anonymous hashes, one item of which is a 'priority' field that you can sort the array of hashes on, and the other a 'value' which will be either the scalar value you want in the node (on the sub queues) or a reference to a subqueue (for the master).)

And of course this isn't a class; that'd be a nice thing to do as well.