ok, so, if performance, speed, and anything good is not a problem to trample on, how about this:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;
use Digest::MD5 qw(md5_hex);
# I want to group domains together if they share at least two of those
+ values.
# The 1st two entires match, the 3rd not
my %domains = (
'foo.com' => {
phone => '1234',
company => 'big co',
contact => 'john',
address => 'cool street',
fax => '5678',
email => 'john@bigco.com',
},
'bar.com' => {
phone => '2222',
company => 'small co',
contact => 'jeff',
address => 'bad street',
fax => '5678',
email => 'john@bigco.com',
},
'baz.com' => {
phone => '9999',
company => 'another co',
contact => 'judy',
address => 'nasty street',
fax => '8888',
email => 'frank@anotherco.com',
},
);
# Build permutation hash
foreach my $domain (keys %domains) {
# Iterate over all the elements in the domain hash
foreach my $o_attr (keys %{$domains{$domain}}){
# As we're creating hashes of each permutation we need to iter
+ate
# over the same elements
foreach my $i_attr (keys %{$domains{$domain}}){
$domains{$domain}{hash}{$o_attr}{$i_attr} = md5_hex(${$dom
+ains{$domain}}{$o_attr}.${$domains{$domain}}{$i_attr});
}
}
}
print Dumper(%domains);
You can then loop over all the permutations looking for hashes that match!