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perldata

PERLDATA(1)            Perl Programmers Reference Guide            PERLDATA(1)



NAME
       perldata - Perl data types

DESCRIPTION
       Variable names

       Perl has three built-in data types: scalars, arrays of scalars, and
       associative arrays of scalars, known as "hashes".  A scalar is a single
       string (of any size, limited only by the available memory), number, or
       a reference to something (which will be discussed in perlref).  Normal
       arrays are ordered lists of scalars indexed by number, starting with 0.
       Hashes are unordered collections of scalar values indexed by their
       associated string key.

       Values are usually referred to by name, or through a named reference.
       The first character of the name tells you to what sort of data struc-
       ture it refers.  The rest of the name tells you the particular value to
       which it refers.  Usually this name is a single identifier, that is, a
       string beginning with a letter or underscore, and containing letters,
       underscores, and digits.  In some cases, it may be a chain of identi-
       fiers, separated by "::" (or by the slightly archaic "'"); all but the
       last are interpreted as names of packages, to locate the namespace in
       which to look up the final identifier (see "Packages" in perlmod for
       details).  It's possible to substitute for a simple identifier, an
       expression that produces a reference to the value at runtime.   This is
       described in more detail below and in perlref.

       Perl also has its own built-in variables whose names don't follow these
       rules.  They have strange names so they don't accidentally collide with
       one of your normal variables.  Strings that match parenthesized parts
       of a regular expression are saved under names containing only digits
       after the "$" (see perlop and perlre).  In addition, several special
       variables that provide windows into the inner working of Perl have
       names containing punctuation characters and control characters.  These
       are documented in perlvar.

       Scalar values are always named with '$', even when referring to a
       scalar that is part of an array or a hash.  The '$' symbol works seman-
       tically like the English word "the" in that it indicates a single value
       is expected.

           $days               # the simple scalar value "days"
           $days[28]           # the 29th element of array @days
           $days{'Feb'}        # the 'Feb' value from hash %days
           $#days              # the last index of array @days

       Entire arrays (and slices of arrays and hashes) are denoted by '@',
       which works much like the word "these" or "those" does in English, in
       that it indicates multiple values are expected.

           @days               # ($days[0], $days[1],... $days[n])
           @days[3,4,5]        # same as ($days[3],$days[4],$days[5])
           @days{'a','c'}      # same as ($days{'a'},$days{'c'})

       Entire hashes are denoted by '%':

           %days               # (key1, val1, key2, val2 ...)

       In addition, subroutines are named with an initial '&', though this is
       optional when unambiguous, just as the word "do" is often redundant in
       English.  Symbol table entries can be named with an initial '*', but
       you don't really care about that yet (if ever :-).

       Every variable type has its own namespace, as do several non-variable
       identifiers.  This means that you can, without fear of conflict, use
       the same name for a scalar variable, an array, or a hash--or, for that
       matter, for a filehandle, a directory handle, a subroutine name, a for-
       mat name, or a label.  This means that $foo and @foo are two different
       variables.  It also means that $foo[1] is a part of @foo, not a part of
       $foo.  This may seem a bit weird, but that's okay, because it is weird.

       Because variable references always start with '$', '@', or '%', the
       "reserved" words aren't in fact reserved with respect to variable
       names.  They are reserved with respect to labels and filehandles, how-
       ever, which don't have an initial special character.  You can't have a
       filehandle named "log", for instance.  Hint: you could say
       "open(LOG,'logfile')" rather than "open(log,'logfile')".  Using upper-
       case filehandles also improves readability and protects you from con-
       flict with future reserved words.  Case is significant--"FOO", "Foo",
       and "foo" are all different names.  Names that start with a letter or
       underscore may also contain digits and underscores.

       It is possible to replace such an alphanumeric name with an expression
       that returns a reference to the appropriate type.  For a description of
       this, see perlref.

       Names that start with a digit may contain only more digits.  Names that
       do not start with a letter, underscore, digit or a caret (i.e.  a con-
       trol character) are limited to one character, e.g.,  $% or $$.  (Most
       of these one character names have a predefined significance to Perl.
       For instance, $$ is the current process id.)

       Context

       The interpretation of operations and values in Perl sometimes depends
       on the requirements of the context around the operation or value.
       There are two major contexts: list and scalar.  Certain operations
       return list values in contexts wanting a list, and scalar values other-
       wise.  If this is true of an operation it will be mentioned in the doc-
       umentation for that operation.  In other words, Perl overloads certain
       operations based on whether the expected return value is singular or
       plural.  Some words in English work this way, like "fish" and "sheep".

       In a reciprocal fashion, an operation provides either a scalar or a
       list context to each of its arguments.  For example, if you say

           int( <STDIN> )

       the integer operation provides scalar context for the <> operator,
       which responds by reading one line from STDIN and passing it back to
       the integer operation, which will then find the integer value of that
       line and return that.  If, on the other hand, you say

           sort( <STDIN> )

       then the sort operation provides list context for <>, which will pro-
       ceed to read every line available up to the end of file, and pass that
       list of lines back to the sort routine, which will then sort those
       lines and return them as a list to whatever the context of the sort
       was.

       Assignment is a little bit special in that it uses its left argument to
       determine the context for the right argument.  Assignment to a scalar
       evaluates the right-hand side in scalar context, while assignment to an
       array or hash evaluates the righthand side in list context.  Assignment
       to a list (or slice, which is just a list anyway) also evaluates the
       righthand side in list context.

       When you use the "use warnings" pragma or Perl's -w command-line
       option, you may see warnings about useless uses of constants or func-
       tions in "void context".  Void context just means the value has been
       discarded, such as a statement containing only ""fred";" or "getp-
       wuid(0);".  It still counts as scalar context for functions that care
       whether or not they're being called in list context.

       User-defined subroutines may choose to care whether they are being
       called in a void, scalar, or list context.  Most subroutines do not
       need to bother, though.  That's because both scalars and lists are
       automatically interpolated into lists.  See "wantarray" in perlfunc for
       how you would dynamically discern your function's calling context.

       Scalar values

       All data in Perl is a scalar, an array of scalars, or a hash of
       scalars.  A scalar may contain one single value in any of three differ-
       ent flavors: a number, a string, or a reference.  In general, conver-
       sion from one form to another is transparent.  Although a scalar may
       not directly hold multiple values, it may contain a reference to an
       array or hash which in turn contains multiple values.

       Scalars aren't necessarily one thing or another.  There's no place to
       declare a scalar variable to be of type "string", type "number", type
       "reference", or anything else.  Because of the automatic conversion of
       scalars, operations that return scalars don't need to care (and in
       fact, cannot care) whether their caller is looking for a string, a num-
       ber, or a reference.  Perl is a contextually polymorphic language whose
       scalars can be strings, numbers, or references (which includes
       objects).  Although strings and numbers are considered pretty much the
       same thing for nearly all purposes, references are strongly-typed,
       uncastable pointers with builtin reference-counting and destructor
       invocation.

       A scalar value is interpreted as TRUE in the Boolean sense if it is not
       the null string or the number 0 (or its string equivalent, "0").  The
       Boolean context is just a special kind of scalar context where no con-
       version to a string or a number is ever performed.

       There are actually two varieties of null strings (sometimes referred to
       as "empty" strings), a defined one and an undefined one.  The defined
       version is just a string of length zero, such as "".  The undefined
       version is the value that indicates that there is no real value for
       something, such as when there was an error, or at end of file, or when
       you refer to an uninitialized variable or element of an array or hash.
       Although in early versions of Perl, an undefined scalar could become
       defined when first used in a place expecting a defined value, this no
       longer happens except for rare cases of autovivification as explained
       in perlref.  You can use the defined() operator to determine whether a
       scalar value is defined (this has no meaning on arrays or hashes), and
       the undef() operator to produce an undefined value.

       To find out whether a given string is a valid non-zero number, it's
       sometimes enough to test it against both numeric 0 and also lexical "0"
       (although this will cause noises if warnings are on).  That's because
       strings that aren't numbers count as 0, just as they do in awk:

           if ($str == 0 && $str ne "0")  {
               warn "That doesn't look like a number";
           }

       That method may be best because otherwise you won't treat IEEE nota-
       tions like "NaN" or "Infinity" properly.  At other times, you might
       prefer to determine whether string data can be used numerically by
       calling the POSIX::strtod() function or by inspecting your string with
       a regular expression (as documented in perlre).

           warn "has nondigits"        if     /\D/;
           warn "not a natural number" unless /^\d+$/;             # rejects -3
           warn "not an integer"       unless /^-?\d+$/;           # rejects +3
           warn "not an integer"       unless /^[+-]?\d+$/;
           warn "not a decimal number" unless /^-?\d+\.?\d*$/;     # rejects .2
           warn "not a decimal number" unless /^-?(?:\d+(?:\.\d*)?|\.\d+)$/;
           warn "not a C float"
               unless /^([+-]?)(?=\d|\.\d)\d*(\.\d*)?([Ee]([+-]?\d+))?$/;

       The length of an array is a scalar value.  You may find the length of
       array @days by evaluating $#days, as in csh.  However, this isn't the
       length of the array; it's the subscript of the last element, which is a
       different value since there is ordinarily a 0th element.  Assigning to
       $#days actually changes the length of the array.  Shortening an array
       this way destroys intervening values.  Lengthening an array that was
       previously shortened does not recover values that were in those ele-
       ments.  (It used to do so in Perl 4, but we had to break this to make
       sure destructors were called when expected.)

       You can also gain some minuscule measure of efficiency by pre-extending
       an array that is going to get big.  You can also extend an array by
       assigning to an element that is off the end of the array.  You can
       truncate an array down to nothing by assigning the null list () to it.
       The following are equivalent:

           @whatever = ();
           $#whatever = -1;

       If you evaluate an array in scalar context, it returns the length of
       the array.  (Note that this is not true of lists, which return the last
       value, like the C comma operator, nor of built-in functions, which
       return whatever they feel like returning.)  The following is always
       true:

           scalar(@whatever) == $#whatever - $[ + 1;

       Version 5 of Perl changed the semantics of $[: files that don't set the
       value of $[ no longer need to worry about whether another file changed
       its value.  (In other words, use of $[ is deprecated.)  So in general
       you can assume that

           scalar(@whatever) == $#whatever + 1;

       Some programmers choose to use an explicit conversion so as to leave
       nothing to doubt:

           $element_count = scalar(@whatever);

       If you evaluate a hash in scalar context, it returns false if the hash
       is empty.  If there are any key/value pairs, it returns true; more pre-
       cisely, the value returned is a string consisting of the number of used
       buckets and the number of allocated buckets, separated by a slash.
       This is pretty much useful only to find out whether Perl's internal
       hashing algorithm is performing poorly on your data set.  For example,
       you stick 10,000 things in a hash, but evaluating %HASH in scalar con-
       text reveals "1/16", which means only one out of sixteen buckets has
       been touched, and presumably contains all 10,000 of your items.  This
       isn't supposed to happen.

       You can preallocate space for a hash by assigning to the keys() func-
       tion.  This rounds up the allocated buckets to the next power of two:

           keys(%users) = 1000;                # allocate 1024 buckets

       Scalar value constructors

       Numeric literals are specified in any of the following floating point
       or integer formats:

           12345
           12345.67
           .23E-10             # a very small number
           3.14_15_92          # a very important number
           4_294_967_296       # underscore for legibility
           0xff                # hex
           0xdead_beef         # more hex
           0377                # octal
           0b011011            # binary

       You are allowed to use underscores (underbars) in numeric literals
       between digits for legibility.  You could, for example, group binary
       digits by threes (as for a Unix-style mode argument such as
       0b110_100_100) or by fours (to represent nibbles, as in 0b1010_0110) or
       in other groups.

       String literals are usually delimited by either single or double
       quotes.  They work much like quotes in the standard Unix shells: dou-
       ble-quoted string literals are subject to backslash and variable sub-
       stitution; single-quoted strings are not (except for "\'" and "\\").
       The usual C-style backslash rules apply for making characters such as
       newline, tab, etc., as well as some more exotic forms.  See "Quote and
       Quote-like Operators" in perlop for a list.

       Hexadecimal, octal, or binary, representations in string literals (e.g.
       '0xff') are not automatically converted to their integer representa-
       tion.  The hex() and oct() functions make these conversions for you.
       See "hex" in perlfunc and "oct" in perlfunc for more details.

       You can also embed newlines directly in your strings, i.e., they can
       end on a different line than they begin.  This is nice, but if you for-
       get your trailing quote, the error will not be reported until Perl
       finds another line containing the quote character, which may be much
       further on in the script.  Variable substitution inside strings is lim-
       ited to scalar variables, arrays, and array or hash slices.  (In other
       words, names beginning with $ or @, followed by an optional bracketed
       expression as a subscript.)  The following code segment prints out "The
       price is $100."

           $Price = '$100';    # not interpolated
           print "The price is $Price.\n";     # interpolated

       There is no double interpolation in Perl, so the $100 is left as is.

       As in some shells, you can enclose the variable name in braces to dis-
       ambiguate it from following alphanumerics (and underscores).  You must
       also do this when interpolating a variable into a string to separate
       the variable name from a following double-colon or an apostrophe, since
       these would be otherwise treated as a package separator:

           $who = "Larry";
           print PASSWD "${who}::0:0:Superuser:/:/bin/perl\n";
           print "We use ${who}speak when ${who}'s here.\n";

       Without the braces, Perl would have looked for a $whospeak, a $who::0,
       and a $who's variable.  The last two would be the $0 and the $s vari-
       ables in the (presumably) non-existent package "who".

       In fact, an identifier within such curlies is forced to be a string, as
       is any simple identifier within a hash subscript.  Neither need quot-
       ing.  Our earlier example, $days{'Feb'} can be written as $days{Feb}
       and the quotes will be assumed automatically.  But anything more
       complicated in the subscript will be interpreted as an expression.

       Version Strings

       Note: Version Strings (v-strings) have been deprecated.  They will not
       be available after Perl 5.8.  The marginal benefits of v-strings were
       greatly outweighed by the potential for Surprise and Confusion.

       A literal of the form "v1.20.300.4000" is parsed as a string composed
       of characters with the specified ordinals.  This form, known as
       v-strings, provides an alternative, more readable way to construct
       strings, rather than use the somewhat less readable interpolation form
       "\x{1}\x{14}\x{12c}\x{fa0}".  This is useful for representing Unicode
       strings, and for comparing version "numbers" using the string compari-
       son operators, "cmp", "gt", "lt" etc.  If there are two or more dots in
       the literal, the leading "v" may be omitted.

           print v9786;              # prints UTF-8 encoded SMILEY, "\x{263a}"
           print v102.111.111;       # prints "foo"
           print 102.111.111;        # same

       Such literals are accepted by both "require" and "use" for doing a ver-
       sion check.  The $^V special variable also contains the running Perl
       interpreter's version in this form.  See "$^V" in perlvar.  Note that
       using the v-strings for IPv4 addresses is not portable unless you also
       use the inet_aton()/inet_ntoa() routines of the Socket package.

       Note that since Perl 5.8.1 the single-number v-strings (like "v65") are
       not v-strings before the "=>" operator (which is usually used to sepa-
       rate a hash key from a hash value), instead they are interpreted as
       literal strings ('v65').  They were v-strings from Perl 5.6.0 to Perl
       5.8.0, but that caused more confusion and breakage than good.  Multi-
       number v-strings like "v65.66" and 65.66.67 continue to be v-strings
       always.

       Special Literals

       The special literals __FILE__, __LINE__, and __PACKAGE__ represent the
       current filename, line number, and package name at that point in your
       program.  They may be used only as separate tokens; they will not be
       interpolated into strings.  If there is no current package (due to an
       empty "package;" directive), __PACKAGE__ is the undefined value.

       The two control characters ^D and ^Z, and the tokens __END__ and
       __DATA__ may be used to indicate the logical end of the script before
       the actual end of file.  Any following text is ignored.

       Text after __DATA__ but may be read via the filehandle "PACK-
       NAME::DATA", where "PACKNAME" is the package that was current when the
       __DATA__ token was encountered.  The filehandle is left open pointing
       to the contents after __DATA__.  It is the program's responsibility to
       "close DATA" when it is done reading from it.  For compatibility with
       older scripts written before __DATA__ was introduced, __END__ behaves
       like __DATA__ in the toplevel script (but not in files loaded with
       "require" or "do") and leaves the remaining contents of the file acces-
       sible via "main::DATA".

       See SelfLoader for more description of __DATA__, and an example of its
       use.  Note that you cannot read from the DATA filehandle in a BEGIN
       block: the BEGIN block is executed as soon as it is seen (during compi-
       lation), at which point the corresponding __DATA__ (or __END__) token
       has not yet been seen.

       Barewords

       A word that has no other interpretation in the grammar will be treated
       as if it were a quoted string.  These are known as "barewords".  As
       with filehandles and labels, a bareword that consists entirely of low-
       ercase letters risks conflict with future reserved words, and if you
       use the "use warnings" pragma or the -w switch, Perl will warn you
       about any such words.  Some people may wish to outlaw barewords
       entirely.  If you say

           use strict 'subs';

       then any bareword that would NOT be interpreted as a subroutine call
       produces a compile-time error instead.  The restriction lasts to the
       end of the enclosing block.  An inner block may countermand this by
       saying "no strict 'subs'".

       Array Joining Delimiter

       Arrays and slices are interpolated into double-quoted strings by join-
       ing the elements with the delimiter specified in the $" variable
       ($LIST_SEPARATOR if "use English;" is specified), space by default.
       The following are equivalent:

           $temp = join($", @ARGV);
           system "echo $temp";

           system "echo @ARGV";

       Within search patterns (which also undergo double-quotish substitution)
       there is an unfortunate ambiguity:  Is "/$foo[bar]/" to be interpreted
       as "/${foo}[bar]/" (where "[bar]" is a character class for the regular
       expression) or as "/${foo[bar]}/" (where "[bar]" is the subscript to
       array @foo)?  If @foo doesn't otherwise exist, then it's obviously a
       character class.  If @foo exists, Perl takes a good guess about
       "[bar]", and is almost always right.  If it does guess wrong, or if
       you're just plain paranoid, you can force the correct interpretation
       with curly braces as above.

       If you're looking for the information on how to use here-documents,
       which used to be here, that's been moved to "Quote and Quote-like Oper-
       ators" in perlop.

       List value constructors

       List values are denoted by separating individual values by commas (and
       enclosing the list in parentheses where precedence requires it):

           (LIST)

       In a context not requiring a list value, the value of what appears to
       be a list literal is simply the value of the final element, as with the
       C comma operator.  For example,

           @foo = ('cc', '-E', $bar);

       assigns the entire list value to array @foo, but

           $foo = ('cc', '-E', $bar);

       assigns the value of variable $bar to the scalar variable $foo.  Note
       that the value of an actual array in scalar context is the length of
       the array; the following assigns the value 3 to $foo:

           @foo = ('cc', '-E', $bar);
           $foo = @foo;                # $foo gets 3

       You may have an optional comma before the closing parenthesis of a list
       literal, so that you can say:

           @foo = (
               1,
               2,
               3,
           );

       To use a here-document to assign an array, one line per element, you
       might use an approach like this:

           @sauces = <<End_Lines =~ m/(\S.*\S)/g;
               normal tomato
               spicy tomato
               green chile
               pesto
               white wine
           End_Lines

       LISTs do automatic interpolation of sublists.  That is, when a LIST is
       evaluated, each element of the list is evaluated in list context, and
       the resulting list value is interpolated into LIST just as if each
       individual element were a member of LIST.  Thus arrays and hashes lose
       their identity in a LIST--the list

           (@foo,@bar,&SomeSub,%glarch)

       contains all the elements of @foo followed by all the elements of @bar,
       followed by all the elements returned by the subroutine named SomeSub
       called in list context, followed by the key/value pairs of %glarch.  To
       make a list reference that does NOT interpolate, see perlref.

       The null list is represented by ().  Interpolating it in a list has no
       effect.  Thus ((),(),()) is equivalent to ().  Similarly, interpolating
       an array with no elements is the same as if no array had been interpo-
       lated at that point.

       This interpolation combines with the facts that the opening and closing
       parentheses are optional (except when necessary for precedence) and
       lists may end with an optional comma to mean that multiple commas
       within lists are legal syntax. The list "1,,3" is a concatenation of
       two lists, "1," and 3, the first of which ends with that optional
       comma.  "1,,3" is "(1,),(3)" is "1,3" (And similarly for "1,,,3" is
       "(1,),(,),3" is "1,3" and so on.)  Not that we'd advise you to use this
       obfuscation.

       A list value may also be subscripted like a normal array.  You must put
       the list in parentheses to avoid ambiguity.  For example:

           # Stat returns list value.
           $time = (stat($file))[8];

           # SYNTAX ERROR HERE.
           $time = stat($file)[8];  # OOPS, FORGOT PARENTHESES

           # Find a hex digit.
           $hexdigit = ('a','b','c','d','e','f')[$digit-10];

           # A "reverse comma operator".
           return (pop(@foo),pop(@foo))[0];

       Lists may be assigned to only when each element of the list is itself
       legal to assign to:

           ($a, $b, $c) = (1, 2, 3);

           ($map{'red'}, $map{'blue'}, $map{'green'}) = (0x00f, 0x0f0, 0xf00);

       An exception to this is that you may assign to "undef" in a list.  This
       is useful for throwing away some of the return values of a function:

           ($dev, $ino, undef, undef, $uid, $gid) = stat($file);

       List assignment in scalar context returns the number of elements pro-
       duced by the expression on the right side of the assignment:

           $x = (($foo,$bar) = (3,2,1));       # set $x to 3, not 2
           $x = (($foo,$bar) = f());           # set $x to f()'s return count

       This is handy when you want to do a list assignment in a Boolean con-
       text, because most list functions return a null list when finished,
       which when assigned produces a 0, which is interpreted as FALSE.

       It's also the source of a useful idiom for executing a function or per-
       forming an operation in list context and then counting the number of
       return values, by assigning to an empty list and then using that
       assignment in scalar context. For example, this code:

           $count = () = $string =~ /\d+/g;

       will place into $count the number of digit groups found in $string.
       This happens because the pattern match is in list context (since it is
       being assigned to the empty list), and will therefore return a list of
       all matching parts of the string. The list assignment in scalar context
       will translate that into the number of elements (here, the number of
       times the pattern matched) and assign that to $count. Note that simply
       using

           $count = $string =~ /\d+/g;

       would not have worked, since a pattern match in scalar context will
       only return true or false, rather than a count of matches.

       The final element of a list assignment may be an array or a hash:

           ($a, $b, @rest) = split;
           my($a, $b, %rest) = @_;

       You can actually put an array or hash anywhere in the list, but the
       first one in the list will soak up all the values, and anything after
       it will become undefined.  This may be useful in a my() or local().

       A hash can be initialized using a literal list holding pairs of items
       to be interpreted as a key and a value:

           # same as map assignment above
           %map = ('red',0x00f,'blue',0x0f0,'green',0xf00);

       While literal lists and named arrays are often interchangeable, that's
       not the case for hashes.  Just because you can subscript a list value
       like a normal array does not mean that you can subscript a list value
       as a hash.  Likewise, hashes included as parts of other lists (includ-
       ing parameters lists and return lists from functions) always flatten
       out into key/value pairs.  That's why it's good to use references some-
       times.

       It is often more readable to use the "=>" operator between key/value
       pairs.  The "=>" operator is mostly just a more visually distinctive
       synonym for a comma, but it also arranges for its left-hand operand to
       be interpreted as a string -- if it's a bareword that would be a legal
       simple identifier ("=>" doesn't quote compound identifiers, that con-
       tain double colons). This makes it nice for initializing hashes:

           %map = (
                        red   => 0x00f,
                        blue  => 0x0f0,
                        green => 0xf00,
          );

       or for initializing hash references to be used as records:

           $rec = {
                       witch => 'Mable the Merciless',
                       cat   => 'Fluffy the Ferocious',
                       date  => '10/31/1776',
           };

       or for using call-by-named-parameter to complicated functions:

          $field = $query->radio_group(
                      name      => 'group_name',
                      values    => ['eenie','meenie','minie'],
                      default   => 'meenie',
                      linebreak => 'true',
                      labels    => \%labels
          );

       Note that just because a hash is initialized in that order doesn't mean
       that it comes out in that order.  See "sort" in perlfunc for examples
       of how to arrange for an output ordering.

       Subscripts

       An array is subscripted by specifying a dollar sign ("$"), then the
       name of the array (without the leading "@"), then the subscript inside
       square brackets.  For example:

           @myarray = (5, 50, 500, 5000);
           print "Element Number 2 is", $myarray[2], "\n";

       The array indices start with 0. A negative subscript retrieves its
       value from the end.  In our example, $myarray[-1] would have been 5000,
       and $myarray[-2] would have been 500.

       Hash subscripts are similar, only instead of square brackets curly
       brackets are used. For example:

           %scientists =
           (
               "Newton" => "Isaac",
               "Einstein" => "Albert",
               "Darwin" => "Charles",
               "Feynman" => "Richard",
           );

           print "Darwin's First Name is ", $scientists{"Darwin"}, "\n";

       Slices

       A common way to access an array or a hash is one scalar element at a
       time.  You can also subscript a list to get a single element from it.

           $whoami = $ENV{"USER"};             # one element from the hash
           $parent = $ISA[0];                  # one element from the array
           $dir    = (getpwnam("daemon"))[7];  # likewise, but with list

       A slice accesses several elements of a list, an array, or a hash simul-
       taneously using a list of subscripts.  It's more convenient than writ-
       ing out the individual elements as a list of separate scalar values.

           ($him, $her)   = @folks[0,-1];              # array slice
           @them          = @folks[0 .. 3];            # array slice
           ($who, $home)  = @ENV{"USER", "HOME"};      # hash slice
           ($uid, $dir)   = (getpwnam("daemon"))[2,7]; # list slice

       Since you can assign to a list of variables, you can also assign to an
       array or hash slice.

           @days[3..5]    = qw/Wed Thu Fri/;
           @colors{'red','blue','green'}
                          = (0xff0000, 0x0000ff, 0x00ff00);
           @folks[0, -1]  = @folks[-1, 0];

       The previous assignments are exactly equivalent to

           ($days[3], $days[4], $days[5]) = qw/Wed Thu Fri/;
           ($colors{'red'}, $colors{'blue'}, $colors{'green'})
                          = (0xff0000, 0x0000ff, 0x00ff00);
           ($folks[0], $folks[-1]) = ($folks[-1], $folks[0]);

       Since changing a slice changes the original array or hash that it's
       slicing, a "foreach" construct will alter some--or even all--of the
       values of the array or hash.

           foreach (@array[ 4 .. 10 ]) { s/peter/paul/ }

           foreach (@hash{qw[key1 key2]}) {
               s/^\s+//;           # trim leading whitespace
               s/\s+$//;           # trim trailing whitespace
               s/(\w+)/\u\L$1/g;   # "titlecase" words
           }

       A slice of an empty list is still an empty list.  Thus:

           @a = ()[1,0];           # @a has no elements
           @b = (@a)[0,1];         # @b has no elements
           @c = (0,1)[2,3];        # @c has no elements

       But:

           @a = (1)[1,0];          # @a has two elements
           @b = (1,undef)[1,0,2];  # @b has three elements

       This makes it easy to write loops that terminate when a null list is
       returned:

           while ( ($home, $user) = (getpwent)[7,0]) {
               printf "%-8s %s\n", $user, $home;
           }

       As noted earlier in this document, the scalar sense of list assignment
       is the number of elements on the right-hand side of the assignment.
       The null list contains no elements, so when the password file is
       exhausted, the result is 0, not 2.

       If you're confused about why you use an '@' there on a hash slice
       instead of a '%', think of it like this.  The type of bracket (square
       or curly) governs whether it's an array or a hash being looked at.  On
       the other hand, the leading symbol ('$' or '@') on the array or hash
       indicates whether you are getting back a singular value (a scalar) or a
       plural one (a list).

       Typeglobs and Filehandles

       Perl uses an internal type called a typeglob to hold an entire symbol
       table entry.  The type prefix of a typeglob is a "*", because it repre-
       sents all types.  This used to be the preferred way to pass arrays and
       hashes by reference into a function, but now that we have real refer-
       ences, this is seldom needed.

       The main use of typeglobs in modern Perl is create symbol table
       aliases.  This assignment:

           *this = *that;

       makes $this an alias for $that, @this an alias for @that, %this an
       alias for %that, &this an alias for &that, etc.  Much safer is to use a
       reference.  This:

           local *Here::blue = \$There::green;

       temporarily makes $Here::blue an alias for $There::green, but doesn't
       make @Here::blue an alias for @There::green, or %Here::blue an alias
       for %There::green, etc.  See "Symbol Tables" in perlmod for more exam-
       ples of this.  Strange though this may seem, this is the basis for the
       whole module import/export system.

       Another use for typeglobs is to pass filehandles into a function or to
       create new filehandles.  If you need to use a typeglob to save away a
       filehandle, do it this way:

           $fh = *STDOUT;

       or perhaps as a real reference, like this:

           $fh = \*STDOUT;

       See perlsub for examples of using these as indirect filehandles in
       functions.

       Typeglobs are also a way to create a local filehandle using the local()
       operator.  These last until their block is exited, but may be passed
       back.  For example:

           sub newopen {
               my $path = shift;
               local  *FH;  # not my!
               open   (FH, $path)          or  return undef;
               return *FH;
           }
           $fh = newopen('/etc/passwd');

       Now that we have the *foo{THING} notation, typeglobs aren't used as
       much for filehandle manipulations, although they're still needed to
       pass brand new file and directory handles into or out of functions.
       That's because *HANDLE{IO} only works if HANDLE has already been used
       as a handle.  In other words, *FH must be used to create new symbol ta-
       ble entries; *foo{THING} cannot.  When in doubt, use *FH.

       All functions that are capable of creating filehandles (open(),
       opendir(), pipe(), socketpair(), sysopen(), socket(), and accept())
       automatically create an anonymous filehandle if the handle passed to
       them is an uninitialized scalar variable. This allows the constructs
       such as "open(my $fh, ...)" and "open(local $fh,...)" to be used to
       create filehandles that will conveniently be closed automatically when
       the scope ends, provided there are no other references to them. This
       largely eliminates the need for typeglobs when opening filehandles that
       must be passed around, as in the following example:

           sub myopen {
               open my $fh, "@_"
                    or die "Can't open '@_': $!";
               return $fh;
           }

           {
               my $f = myopen("</etc/motd");
               print <$f>;
               # $f implicitly closed here
           }

       Note that if an initialized scalar variable is used instead the result
       is different: "my $fh='zzz'; open($fh, ...)" is equivalent to "open(
       *{'zzz'}, ...)".  "use strict 'refs'" forbids such practice.

       Another way to create anonymous filehandles is with the Symbol module
       or with the IO::Handle module and its ilk.  These modules have the
       advantage of not hiding different types of the same name during the
       local().  See the bottom of "open()" in perlfunc for an example.

SEE ALSO
       See perlvar for a description of Perl's built-in variables and a dis-
       cussion of legal variable names.  See perlref, perlsub, and "Symbol
       Tables" in perlmod for more discussion on typeglobs and the *foo{THING}
       syntax.



perl v5.8.6                       2004-11-05                       PERLDATA(1)