Returning hash reference from a sub

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

Hi Monks!
I am trying to return a has reference from this sub, but it seems that this is not the right way of doing it, can someone tell what is the best way to accomplish this even without pushing it into an array in the while loop, is its possible?

sub names{
...
    my @loop_data = (); # initialize an array
    
    while ( my $row = $data_handle->fetchrow_hashref ){
      my %row_data;  # get a fresh hash for the row data
      # fill in this row
      $row_data{names} = $row->{'names'} || '';
      # push a reference to this row into the loop!
      push(@loop_data, \%row_data);
    }

    my %final_data;
    
    if(!@loop_data) {

      push @loop_data, {names => 'No names'};
      %final_data = @loop_data;
      return \%final_data;
      
    }else {

      %final_data = @loop_data;
      return \%final_data;

   }


}
[download]

Thanks for looking!

Comment on Returning hash reference from a sub Download Code

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Re: Returning hash reference from a sub by blue_cowdawg (Monsignor) on Mar 18, 2013 at 14:37 UTC
seems to me you are going to a lot of trouble to return a single row. `#sniglet # # somewhere in your while loop return { names => $row->{names} } if $row->{names};` [download] Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional Peter -at- Berghold -dot- Net; AOL IM redcowdawg Yahoo IM: blue_cowdawg	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Returning hash reference from a sub by tobias_hofer (Friar) on Mar 18, 2013 at 13:47 UTC
Hi, I am usually directly using references to anonymous hashes, like this: `while ( my $row = $data_handle->fetchrow_hashref ){ my $row_data = {}; # get a fresh hash for the row data # fill in this row $row_data->{names} = $row->{'names'} \|\| '';` [download] And at the end I simply do `return $row_data` this is working fine for me. Cheers Tobias	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Returning hash reference from a sub by Anonymous Monk on Mar 18, 2013 at 13:57 UTC
Yes, but I am still stuck with only one row of data, I need to get all the data from the while loop and return it from the sub.	[reply]
Re^3: Returning hash reference from a sub by Corion (Patriarch) on Mar 18, 2013 at 13:59 UTC
`... %final_data = @loop_data; ...` [download] What is this line supposed to do? Please also explain how you intend to use the data stored in `%final_data`. Maybe you wanted to use the following construct instead? `return { names => \@loop_data };` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Returning hash reference from a sub by tobias_hofer (Friar) on Mar 18, 2013 at 14:10 UTC
Re^4: Returning hash reference from a sub by Anonymous Monk on Mar 18, 2013 at 14:08 UTC
Re^5: Returning hash reference from a sub by Corion (Patriarch) on Mar 18, 2013 at 14:13 UTC
Re^5: Returning hash reference from a sub by tobias_hofer (Friar) on Mar 18, 2013 at 14:13 UTC
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