How can I store multiple values in a Perl hash table?

Question

Up until recently, I've been storing multiple values into different hashes with the same keys as follows:

%boss = (
    "Allan"  => "George",
    "Bob"    => "George",
    "George" => "lisa" );

%status = (
    "Allan"  => "Contractor",
    "Bob"    => "Part-time",
    "George" => "Full-time" );

and then I can reference $boss("Bob") and $status("Bob") but this gets unwieldy if there's a lot of properties each key can have and I have to worry about keeping the hashes in sync.

Is there a better way for storing multiple values in a hash? I could store the values as

        "Bob" => "George:Part-time"

and then disassemble the strings with split, but there must be a more elegant way.

Answer 1

This is the standard way, as per perldoc perldsc.

~> more test.pl
%chums = ( "Allan" => {"Boss" => "George", "Status" => "Contractor"},
           "Bob" => {"Boss" => "Peter", "Status" => "Part-time"} );

print $chums{"Allan"}{"Boss"}."\n";
print $chums{"Bob"}{"Boss"}."\n";
print $chums{"Bob"}{"Status"}."\n";
$chums{"Bob"}{"Wife"} = "Pam";
print $chums{"Bob"}{"Wife"}."\n";

~> perl test.pl
George
Peter
Part-time
Pam