Is there a general way of converting a hash into an two-dimensional array?

Question

The way a hash is structed can always vary, it can be a hash of a hash of an array or whatever. And for every different struct of a hash there needs to be a different implementation of turning it into a two dimensional array.

Is there a general way of converting a hash into an array? Such that i could say, for instance, first key becomes column 0, second key column 1 etc.

Example from comments:

$distangle{some_distance}{some_angle}=(); now I want to convert that hash of hashes into an ordinary two dimensional array @distangle=(some_distance,some_angle). That's a method, then tomorrow I have some different form of a hash I also need to convert to a two dimensional array.

Answer 1

What is "first" key in a hash? The keys are not ordered. Do you want to order them alphabetically?

@arr = map { $hash{$key} } sort keys %hash;

EDIT:

OP wants a 2D array, so here it is:

@arr = ()
for $first (keys %hash) {
    for $second (keys %{ $hash{$first} }) {
        for $third (keys %{ $hash{$first}{$second} }) {
            my $value = $hash{$first}{$second}{$third};
            push @arr, ($first, $second, $third, $value);

Something like this?

EDIT 2: This solution looks nice too.

Answer 2

Firstly, hashes are unordered, so when you say the "first key", there's no such thing.

Secondly, if you do have a hash of hash of arrays (as in your example), then it seems to me that the strict requirement of reducing it to a 2-dimensional array will result in data-loss (assuming you mean that none of the elements in that array can be hashrefs or arrayrefs).