http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=139433

agustina_s has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Perlmonks.. I want to ask something which must be very easy for most of you but really weird for me as I am new in Perl. When I want to print something which is a reference to an array.. I try to use this : 
print ${$entry->FTs->elements};

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but it doesn't work. If I print without the ${ }, it will just give me output like : 
ARRAY(ox1bf614)

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The same thing also happen in hash.. it's just that the output is HASH(...). How should I print the content? Thanks in advanced

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Re: ask about array and hash
by Malus (Acolyte) on Jan 17, 2002 at 08:34 UTC
    When you say:

    print ${$entry->FTs->elements};

    I think you meant to dereference it as an @rray and not as a $calar

    For example:

    getting the contents of a SCALAR reference: ${ $scalar_ref }

    getting the contents of an ARRAY reference: @{ $array_ref }


    If I understood the question, you meant this: 
    print @{$entry->FTs->elements};

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    Malus
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Re: ask about array and hash
by TStanley (Canon) on Jan 17, 2002 at 07:56 UTC
    Tested on Windows 98, ActiveState Perl 5.6, Build 630:
    #!perl -w
use strict;

my @array = qw(a b c d e f g);

my $ref = \@array;

print @$ref;

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    The above prints out "abcdefg". What you are doing is effectively de-referencing the variable. You might also want to read up on perlref

    UPDATE:Corrected the shebang line. Thanks wog for pointing that out.

    TStanley
    --------
    "Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose you were a
    member of Congress... But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
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Re: ask about array and hash
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 17, 2002 at 08:23 UTC
    References have to be dereferenced to print or iterate
    through. Your code was attempting to access an element
    of the list (array) instead of the entire array.

    To access a single element of a referenced array you can:
    print ${$entry->FTs->elements}[$number]
    Make sure you use 'use strict' it would have thrown an
    error when the example you gave was used, I am not
    saying it would be any clearer as to how to solve it
    but at least you would have a starting point :^)

    For an array reference you would iterate as:
    print "$_\n" for @{$entry->FTs->elements};
    for a hash ref:
    print "$_ = $hashref->{$_}\n" for keys %{$hashref};

    See 'perldoc perlref' for more information.
    or on the web at: perlref
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Re: ask about array and hash
by busunsl (Vicar) on Jan 17, 2002 at 11:39 UTC
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Re: ask about array and hash
by reclaw (Curate) on Jan 17, 2002 at 10:03 UTC
    perlreftut - Mark's very short tutorial about references. This got me on the right track figuring it out.
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      perldsc is pretty useful too.

      rdfield

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Re: ask about array and hash
by xtype (Deacon) on Jan 17, 2002 at 09:04 UTC
    Or you can loop through them to print the elements: 
    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my @array = qw(a b c d e f g);
my %hash = (
        '1st' , 'a',
        '2nd' , 'b',
        '3rd' , 'c',
);

while (<@array>) {
        print;
}

foreach my $key (sort keys %hash) {
        print "$key: $hash{$key}\n";
}

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        Indeed. I wanted to show that there was more than one way to print and or access the data in an array or hash. Hence my using a foreach loop in the second example, also showing use of sort(). I am sorry if my globbing offended you in anyway. -xtype
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