Hashtable/dictionary/map lookup with regular expressions

Question

I\'m trying to figure out if there\'s a reasonably efficient way to perform a lookup in a dictionary (or a hash, or a map, or whatever your favorite language calls it) where the

Answer 1

There is a Perl module that does just this Tie::Hash::Regex.

use Tie::Hash::Regex;
my %h;

tie %h, 'Tie::Hash::Regex';

$h{key}   = 'value';
$h{key2}  = 'another value';
$h{stuff} = 'something else';

print $h{key};  # prints 'value'
print $h{2};    # prints 'another value'
print $h{'^s'}; # prints 'something else'

print tied(%h)->FETCH(k); # prints 'value' and 'another value'

delete $h{k};   # deletes $h{key} and $h{key2};