[ic] Perl / Session question

[interchange at thedesignpeople.com]

Stefan Hornburg wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 17:42:58 -0700
> "interchange at thedesignpeople.com" <interchange at thedesignpeople.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Could someone knowledgable in perl be kind enough to help me out here.
>>
>>I have discovered that this works to manually set the discount:
>>   $Session->{discount} = ({
>>                     'code1' => '199',
>>                     'code2' => '199',
>>                     'code3' => '199'
>>			});
>>
>>I thought the following would have the same effect but does not work:
>># create empty array
>>@arrayval = ();
>># create a hash
>>$hashval = {
>>           'code1' => '199',
>>           'code2' => '199',
>>           'code3' => '199'
>>           };
>># put the hash into an array
>>push @arrayval, $hashval;
>>
>>$Session->{discount} = @arrayval;
>>
>>The script dies with the following error:
>>Runtime error: Can't use string ("1") as a HASH ref while "strict refs" 
>>in use at /www/interchange/interchange-5/lib/Vend/Interpolate.pm line 5151.
>>
>>I'm not sure what this error means.
>>Can someone please explain what I'm doing wrong?
> 
> 
> $Session->{discount} = $hashval;
> 
> Although doing tricks like that are not for the unwary and may break
> on later versions of Interchange.
> 

Is this because the datastructure for holding the discounts may change 
or for security reasons (e.g. potential for an oursider to set their own 
discount methods) or both?  I was trying to figure out a dynamic and 
easy way to apply a discount to a large number of items without having 
to resort to manually inputing the
[discount sku]%s-10[/discount]
for each sku.

What I am doing is putting all the skus in a scratch varaible named for 
the particular discount code.

Then I set another scratch variable for the code that the visitor inputs.

In perl i read the skus corresponding to discount code entered and set 
the $Session->{discount} to the appropriate value.

I can visualize this working with a database table instead of a scratch 
variable to hold the discounts and skus as well.

I realize if the discount mechanism ever changes it will need to change 
my code, but since I currently don't see another way to do this (except 
for the manual mehtod), i'm kinda stuck.

Regards,
Mike Kang