I don't have any clever map sort or grep approaches, but the
code could be simplified. For the sequence of if-then
statements, one could use
my @institutions = qw|hospital1 hospital2|;
my %seen;
$seen{$_}++ foreach @institutions;
if (!defined $institution) {
$institution_table{"unaffiliated"} ++;
} elsif (exists $seen{lc $institution}) {
$institution_table{lc $institution} ++;
} else {
$institution_table{"other"} ++;
}
For the loop, here is a slightly more clever method:
my $cat_age = int ($age/5) - 9;
my @age_cats = qw|fortyfive_fifty fifty_fiftyfive fiftyfive_sixty|;
foreach (keys %institution_table) {
$institution_table{ $_ }{ $age_cats[$cat_age] }++;
}
One could use a map for the loop, but the foreach is faster.
-Mark