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Hash to Scalar Assignment Oddity

by dsb (Chaplain)
on Jan 26, 2006 at 15:28 UTC ( [id://525734]=perlquestion: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

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

A coworker and I were trying to work out some of the code when tie'ing a hash to a Berkeley DB file. I noticed that one of the lines called for the return value from a tie() to be assigned to a scalar variable. So I tried assigning a regular old hash - not a reference to a hash - to a scalar. I didn't get what i expected.

I half expected the code to bomb. Instead the assignment evaluated and when I printed the contents of the scalar, I got a weird result. See the code.

%db = ( one => 1, two => 2, three => 3 ); print %db, "\n"; # prints 'three3one1two2' $db = %db; print $db, "\n"; # prints '3/8'
Anyone have an idea of what's going on here and why I get a fraction when I print the contents of $db?


dsb
This @ISA my( $cool ) %SIG

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Hash to Scalar Assignment Oddity
by philcrow (Priest) on Jan 26, 2006 at 15:34 UTC
    When you put a hash into scalar context, it gives information about the hash buckets (rarely useful).

    Phil

Re: Hash to Scalar Assignment Oddity
by bunnyman (Hermit) on Jan 26, 2006 at 18:12 UTC

    This isn't odd. It's supposed to do that.

    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 precisely, 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 context 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.
    -- man perldata
      This isn't odd. It's supposed to do that.

      Are you saying defined behavior is never odd?!? That's quite a bold statement, and one I'm certainly not prepared to make (especially in this case, where I do indeed find the defined behavior a bit odd, even if it's well documented and I already knew what it was). :-)

      Now what doc is that in?


      dsb
      This @ISA my( $cool ) %SIG
        I already told you. It's perldata.
Re: Hash to Scalar Assignment Oddity
by borisz (Canon) on Jan 26, 2006 at 15:47 UTC
    The first value is the number of used entries and the second the number of slots. Read it as we use currently 3 from 8 entries. You can set the slots if you like with:
    keys %db = 1000; $db = %db; print $db;
    Boris
Re: Hash to Scalar Assignment Oddity
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jan 26, 2006 at 17:16 UTC

    In list context, the hash returns
    ('one', 1, 'two', 2, 'three', 3)
    (but not necessarily in that order). So
    print(%db, "\n");
    is the same as
    print('one', 1, 'two', 2, 'three', 3, "\n");
    When you pass a list to print, it does
    join($,, LIST)
    So the above print is equivalent to
    print(join($,, 'one', 1, 'two', 2, 'three', 3, "\n"));

    However, in scalar context, the hash some information about its buckets. To do emulate the
    behaviour of print, do
    $db = join($,, %db);

    References:
    hash
    print
    $,

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