Hello KeighleHawk,

Naturally, the array can be returned in random order.

Actually, the elements of an array are always in a fixed order — that’s the nature of arrays. I think you mean the array will be populated in a random order?

...part of the structure I am comparing includes an array of hashes.... Initially, I was using a sort on one of the hash fields, but as my data set increased, I started to hit return values with different hash structures so my sorting column needed to change.

I don’t understand this. If you are comparing an array of hashes with an unordered list of hashes, it seems to me that you have to proceed in two steps:

1. Pair the hashes;
2. For each pair, the hashes are equal if and only if they contain exactly the same key/value pairs (in any order).

From which (I think) it follows that a generic procedure is all that’s required:

#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Test::More tests => 2;
use Test::Deep;

my @x = ( { j => 12, a => 1 }, { b => [1, 11] }, { c => 3 } );
my @y = ( { c => 3 }, { b => [0, 11] }, { a => 1, j => 12 } );

cmp_deeply(          \@x,        bag(@y), 'Deep' );
print '-' x 20, "\n";
 is_deeply( sort_hash(@x), sort_hash(@y), 'More' );

sub sort_hash
{
    return [ sort { (sort keys %$a)[0] cmp (sort keys %$b)[0] } @_ ];
}
[download]

Output:

16:56 >perl 1314_SoPW.pl
1..2
not ok 1 - Deep
#   Failed test 'Deep'
#   at 1314_SoPW.pl line 22.
# Comparing $data as a Bag
# Missing: 1 reference
# Extra: 1 reference
--------------------
not ok 2 - More
#   Failed test 'More'
#   at 1314_SoPW.pl line 24.
#     Structures begin differing at:
#          $got->[1]{b}[0] = '1'
#     $expected->[1]{b}[0] = '0'
# Looks like you failed 2 tests of 2.

16:56 >
[download]

Clearly, Test::More::is_deeply returns a much more informative message on failure than does Test::Deep::cmp_deeply — as you have stated. But in what way does my sub sort_hash fall short of the functionality provided by Test::Deep::bag for your purposes? Please clarify by providing sample input for which the comparison with Test::Deep::bag will work, but a generic comparison based on hash keys will not.

Hope that helps,