I am in search of wisdom!

I was wondering if you could explain a couple things for me from your example:

$nodes{$_}{name}||=$_
        for $c,$p;
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-- I'm not use to putting '$_' as a key for a hash. I am also not sure what '||=$_' means/does. Can you explain?

I'm also not sure why you are deleting children...

delete $nodes{$_}
    for @children;
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Sorry for the newbie questions -- I've been dabbling in Perl for years, and I use hashes a lot but my syntax is still on the simple side.

I have another question. Any tips on printing nested hashes? I use Data::Dumper all the time, but I usually just use the default output. What I am looking for is the "full path". For example, in the above example, we have this:

 'name' => 'a',
          'kids' => {
                      'c' => {
                               'name' => 'c',
                               'kids' => {
                                           'e' => {
                                                    'name' => 'e'
                                                  },
                                           'f' => {
                                                    'name' => 'f'
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-- I'd like to print out something like this:

a
a:c
a:c:e
a:c:f
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I usually just print each piece of the hash, which isn't too hard if I created the hash. For example, if I had a hash ref that had name/address information, I'd do something like:

print $hash->{$key}->{'name'} . "\t";
print $hash->{$key}->{'addres'} . "\n";
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But if the hash is created via autovivification (for example, let's say I am constructing a complex node tree from a parent-child list of several thousand nodes) I get stumped on how I'd be able to print the full path of each element in the hash.

Does that make any sense? I am waking up and keeping two little kids from killing each other. ;)

Any tips much appreciated!!

Thanks.

--Bryan