The subroutine needs some way of knowing (or, at least, guessing) whether it has been passed an array or an array reference.

First thought is to test whether the first argument is an array reference:

See ref. The problem with that approach is that it won’t work if the array passed into the subroutine happens to have an array reference as its first element.

A better approach is to test whether the subroutine is called in list context:

See wantarray. If the sub is called in list context (i.e., the caller is expecting it to return a list), then from the specification we can assume the array was passed in as a list. Otherwise, we assume the array was passed in as a reference.

Here is how I would solve the problem:

Note: this approach does not rely on sorting the list, but outputs the no-duplicates version in its original order. The specification as given does not mention sorting.

Hope that helps,

Thanks to both of you!
I have tried this,which works if I pass the array as array, but why can't I make it work if I pass the array as reference to array


sub clean_list {

    my $type_of_arg=ref(\@_);

    my @array_with_duplicates=(@_);
    my @array_no_duplicates;

    if($type_of_arg eq 'ARRAY')        #if the list is passed as an ar
+ray
    {
        my $previous = '';
        while (scalar @array_with_duplicates > 0) 
        {
               my $next = shift(@array_with_duplicates);
               if ($previous ne $next) 
               {
                 push(@array_no_duplicates, $next);
                 $previous = $next;
               }
        }
    }

    elsif($type_of_arg eq 'REF')    #if the list is passed as a refere
+nce to an array
    {
        my %hash;
          @hash{@{$_[0]}}=();
          #@{$_[0]}=keys %hash;
          @array_no_duplicates=keys %hash;
    }

    return (@array_no_duplicates);
}

open(IN, '<', 'ex5.acc') or die "Could not read file\n";
my @initial_array = <IN>;
close IN;
@initial_array = sort @initial_array;

my @final_array = clean_list(@initial_array);  #this works
# @final_array = clean_list(\@initial_array);  #this does not work
# Save the clean table
open(OUT, ">", "ex5.acc.CLEAN") or die "Could not create file\n";
print OUT @final_array;
close OUT;
[download]

Two obvious problems (there may be others):

• @_ is the array of arguments passed into the subroutine, so \@_ will always be an array reference. You need ref($_[0]) which tests the first argument (but see my answer above as to why this may not be the best approach).

• If the array is passed in as a reference, $type_of_arg will be the string 'ARRAY', indicating an array reference. If the array is passed in as a list (and if the first element of that list doesn’t happen to be a reference), $type_of_arg will be the empty string, not 'REF'. Again, see ref.

Hope that helps,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum

Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

As a first step, have a look at ref, that let's you decide whether a variable contains a reference to an array.