sunil@perl has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hai Monks, I am a perl beginner and trying to experiment on arrays. I came across this error in one of my experiment, Can't use an undefined value as an ARRAY reference at p42svn.pl line 844. The code is as shown below, 

@{$res{'act'}} = sort {
        return 0 unless $a->{'act'} =~ /^move/ and $b->{'act'} =~ /^mo
+ve/;
        return $a->{'act'} cmp $b->{'act'};  # add < delete
    } @{$res{'acts'}};

return \%res;

[download]
Thanks in advance

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Array reference error
by tobyink (Canon) on Feb 27, 2014 at 14:12 UTC

    This probably means that $res{'acts'} is undef, therefore you'll get a warning about trying to treat it like an arrayref. One simple solution is:

    @{$res{'act'}} = sort {
        return 0 unless $a->{'act'} =~ /^move/ and $b->{'act'} =~ /^mo
+ve/;
        return $a->{'act'} cmp $b->{'act'};  # add < delete
    } @{ $res{'acts'} or [] };

return \%res;

    [download]

    The @{ $res{'acts'} or [] } construct will choose $res{'acts'} (if it evaluates to true) or a reference to an empty array (otherwise), and whichever gets chosen, then dereference the arrayref to get an array.

    The other easy way is to simply disable that warning before you attempt the sort...

    no warnings qw(uninitialized);

@{$res{'act'}} = sort {
        return 0 unless $a->{'act'} =~ /^move/ and $b->{'act'} =~ /^mo
+ve/;
        return $a->{'act'} cmp $b->{'act'};  # add < delete
    } @{$res{'acts'}};

return \%res;

    [download]

    Warnings are supposed to be helpful. If you're not finding them helpful, there's no point in suffering them.

    use Moops; class Cow :rw { has name => (default => 'Ermintrude') }; say Cow->new->name
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      There doesn't seem to be an  'undefined' warning (see perllexwarn), but turning off strict references together with  'uninitialized' warnings (both of these actions taken within the narrowest possible scope, of course) seems to do the trick. 

      c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump -le
"my %res;
 ;;
 no strict qw(refs);
 no warnings qw(uninitialized);
 ;;
 @{$res{'act'}} = sort {
   return 0 unless $a->{'act'} =~ /^move/ and $b->{'act'} =~ /^move/;
   return $a->{'act'} cmp $b->{'act'};
   } @{$res{'acts'}};
 dd \%res;
"
{ act => [] }

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

        Oops, yes. I meant uninitialized. Fixed.

        Turning off strict refs should not be necessary for this.

        use Moops; class Cow :rw { has name => (default => 'Ermintrude') }; say Cow->new->name
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Array reference error
by toolic (Bishop) on Feb 27, 2014 at 13:48 UTC
[reply]

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