Can anyone see what I am doing wrong here?

<cfscript>
answersStr = {};
resultStr = {};

//Struct for answer 1	
answersStr.insert("value", 30);
answersStr.insert("description", "Q1 Desc.");
//Add Answer 1 to result Struct
resultStr.insert("Q1", answersStr);
	
answersStr.clear();
answersStr.insert("value", 100);
answersStr.insert("description", "Q2 Description");
resultStr.insert("Q2", answersStr);

writeDump(resultStr);
</cfscript>

It gives the following output What happened to the values for Q1? They obviously got overridden by Q2 - but why? If I dump it directly after the Q1 insert into resultStr I get Q1's correct data. Struct Q1 Struct description string Q2 Description value number 100 Q2 Struct description string Q2 Description value number 100

IMO that is expected behavior here. structInsert() the

answersStr

to

resultStr.Q1,

it insert

answersStr

variable reference, not just the value, So

resultStr.Q1

reference

answersStr

. any change made in

answersStr

will reflect in

resultStr.Q1

. Here you have to use structCopy() or duplicate().

I presume @zackster was answering this question too. He and @pothys-mitrahsoft have nailed it. You're reusing

answersStr

, so blitzing the original values when you

clear

it and reassign its properties. This is expected behaviour (both Lucee and CF btw, @zackster). I would probably revise yer code to use struct literals rather than

insert

and

clear

, eg something along these lines: https://trycf.com/gist/041d070e8618c73ae28bc831dbe74ef7/lucee5?theme=monokai

resultStr = {};

answersStr = {
    "value" = 30,
    "description" = "Q1 Desc."
};
resultStr["Q1"] = answersStr;

answersStr = {
    "value" = 100,
    "description" = "Q2 Description"
};
resultStr["Q2"] = answersStr

writeDump(resultStr);

IMO putting stuff into a struct via

insert

is kind of a 2000s approach to such things, for most situations other than a coupla edge-cases.

I have been doing a bit of Functional Programming in Scala, recently - and, so, it was just habit to use "collection"."action". I am more than happy to use struct literals, its clear ands easy to read / maintain. I remember when CF 4.5 was released... ahh the good old days - when what you typed is what you got... None of this copy value / reference "thinga-majig".... you know - when you could call yourself a web-programmer without the feintest idea of what you were really doing!!!

I hate to break it to you, but - whilst I cannot test your code on CF4.5 - I can test it on CF5, and it works the same way. As far as I can recollect, structs have always worked this way in CF.

"Oh" : I didn't say it worked they way I wanted in 4/4.5 - just reminiscing about the good old days when, at least, it seemed to be easier!

heeeheeeheee

@gavinbaumanis in response to this question, post a trycf.com example https://cfml.slack.com/archives/C06T99N9G/p1654187576612709 that's the easiest way

https://trycf.com/gist/15bd7eee1ad661671eb8793cccf67658/lucee5?theme=monokai added if the order of questions needs to remain in the order you added, change the first line to

questionsStruct = [:];

Thanks! @Matt Jones - really appreciate it.... Not sure why - it never occurred to me that I need the collection again in the output....