in reply to Re: Pointers and References
in thread Pointers and References
Hi Ken,
You're using terms — pointer, address, memory location — which I suspect you've picked up from one or more other languages. You are then attempting to apply those terms to Perl, assuming they have the same meaning. I think this may be the source of your problems.
Guilty as charged! I was trying to replicate in Perl the following program from a C tutorial on functions and pointers:
#include <stdio.h> int sum_and_diff (int a, int b, int *res) { int sum; sum = a + b; *res = a – b; return sum; } void main (void) { int b = 2; int diff; printf ("The sum of 5 and %d is %d\n", b, sum_and_diff (5, b, &diff)); printf ("The difference of 5 and %d is %d\n", b, diff); }
Perhaps I just need to focus on one language at a time! And thank you for the detailed example and explanation!
You can reference and dereference to great depths if you want; as in this exaggerated example
I'm just reading this now but came to the same conclusion earlier today when I was reading some of the other responses to this thread.
I suggest you play around with examples like these to get a better understanding of how all of this works.
Agreed. What I take away from your examples is that when I try to print or output a variable that contains a reference, I can clearly see what that is in reference to. For example:
SCALAR(0x60008a730) --> reference to a scalar ARRAY(0x60008a828) --> reference to an array REF(0x600003e80) --> reference to a reference
This helps you understand how to dereference it:
$$x # dereference reference to scalar (if $x is a scalar) @$x # dereference reference to array (if $x is reference to an array) @$$x # dereference reference to reference of an array
I hope I got that last bit right!
Also note that I didn't use, or indeed need, terms such as pointer, address or memory location.
Duly noted! And thanks for the alias tip. I will have to park that one away for the time being because as useful as Perl one-liners are, I don't think I'm quite ready to use them that frequently.
Gratias tibi ago
Leudwinus