\@arr =
[
  1,
  2,
  3,
  [ anna, beth, christie, denise ],
]

foreach my girl (@$arr[3]) {
  print "$girl\n";
}
[download]

This is what I try to do. Dump doesn't show:

\@arr =
[
  1,
  2,
  3,
  \[ anna, beth, christie, denise ],
]
[download]

(Note the ref marker in front of the girl array.)

If I understand correctly, the @{} is needed to deref the array ref. But Dump shows me it's an ordinary array, like in my first simple array example in this post.

Thanks for helping out...

Your confusion may be coming from the order in which @ and [3] are being handled. @ first converts $fldref from an array reference into an array. Then it lets you use normal array element syntax, @$fldref[3], to access its elements. In other words, @$fldref[3] is equivalent to $fldref->[3].

You might be able to see this more clearly if we replace $fldref->[3] with a variable, like this:

my $aVars=  [
    ["\$a", "Tarina Babarista, pienest{ elefantista"],
    ["\$s", "(26'34); orkestroitu"],
    ["\$d", "Poulenc, Francis"],
    ["\$g", "Brunhoff, Jean de "],
    ["\$h", "P|ysti, Lasse"],
    ["\$j", "Fran*8aix, Jean"],
  ];

my $fldref= [ 500, 0, 0, $aVars ];
[download]

$fldref->[3] is $aVars, a reference to an array and not the dereferenced array, @$aVars. So when you loop on foreach (@$fldref[3]) you are really looping on foreach($fldref->[3]) which is just a loop over the single element $aVars. That is why you dump only once inside the foreach loop and see the $aVars array as a whole when you dump it rather than the individual elements of $aVars, each dumped separately.

If you want to loop on the contents of $fldref->[3] you have to dereference it yet again and do @{$fldref->[3]} or @{@fldref[3]}. This works as expected:

foreach my $tmp (@{$fldref->[3]}) {
  print "$tmp: <@$tmp>\n";
}

#outputs
ARRAY(0x814ec28) <$a Tarina Babarista, pienest{ elefantista>
ARRAY(0x81e652c) <$s (26'34); orkestroitu>
ARRAY(0x81e64fc) <$d Poulenc, Francis>
ARRAY(0x81e5a4c) <$g Brunhoff, Jean de >
ARRAY(0x81f236c) <$h P|ysti, Lasse>
ARRAY(0x81f239c) <$j Fran*8aix, Jean>
[download]

Hope that helps, beth

I think you may be confused about Dumper output, and perhaps about what's actually in your arrays. In your first example:

\@arr =
[
  1,
  2,
  3,
  [ anna, beth, christie, denise ],
]
[download]

the fourth element in your array is an array ref, not an array. You can only store scalars in an array, so the only way to store an array in another array is to store a reference. The output you show in the second part:

  \[ anna, beth, christie, denise ],
[download]

would actually mean a reference to a reference to an array.

december:

I think you are also confused about Perl array and anonymous array syntax. The statement
    my @array = ('a', 'b', 'c');
constructs a list which is then used to initialize an array. The statement
    my $array_ref = ['a', 'b', 'c'];
constructs an anonymous array and returns a scalar reference to the array that is then used to initialize a scalar. See discussions of the  [ ] anonymous array constructor in perlref and perlreftut.

Consider the following examples:

>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump=dump -le
"my \@arr =
   [
     1,
     2,
     3,
     [ 'anna', 'beth', 'christie', 'denise' ],
   ];
 dump @arr;
"
syntax error at -e line 1, near "my \"
Global symbol "@arr" requires explicit package name at -e line 1.
Global symbol "@arr" requires explicit package name at -e line 1.
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.

>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump=dump -le
"my @arr;
 \@arr =
   [
     1,
     2,
     3,
     [ 'anna', 'beth', 'christie', 'denise' ],
   ];
 dump @arr;
"
Can't modify reference constructor in scalar assignment ... near "];"
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.

>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump=dump -le
"my @arr =
   [
     1,
     2,
     3,
     [ 'anna', 'beth', 'christie', 'denise' ],
   ];
 dump @arr;
 print scalar @arr;
"
[1, 2, 3, ["anna", "beth", "christie", "denise"]]

1

>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump=dump -le
"my @arr =
   (
     1,
     2,
     3,
     [ 'anna', 'beth', 'christie', 'denise' ],
   );
 dump @arr;
 print scalar @arr;
"
(1, 2, 3, ["anna", "beth", "christie", "denise"])

4
[download]

Neither of the first two examples compile at all.

The third example initializes an array with a single element (as shown by the
    print scalar @arr;
statement), a scalar that is a reference to an anonymously constructed array.

The fourth example initializes an array with four elements (one of which happens to be a reference to yet another anonymous array).