Error hash declaration

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

A fairly simple code to load a file into a hash of keys and values. I declared my hash before the while loop globally, but when I try to use $hashofstates->($key) = $val; it throws me an error as if it wasnt declared. What could possibly be wrong?

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my $File = "inp.txt";
open FILE, '<' , $File or die $!;
my %hashofstates;
while (my $line=<FILE>)
{
 chomp $line;
 my ($key, $val) = split /\s+/, $line ,2;
 $hashofstates->($key) = $val;
}
close FILE or die 'Could not close file';
print (values \%hashofstates);
[download]

Error:

perl prog.pl
Global symbol "$hashpfstates" requires explicit package name
[download]

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Re: Error hash declaration by NetWallah (Canon) on Aug 30, 2014 at 00:12 UTC
my %hashofstates; << This declares a hash : "%hashofstates" . $hashofstates->($key) << This attempts to access a SCALAR REFERENCE : "$hashofstates" , a totally different animal that does not exist. The distinction between the hash and the hash-ref is the use of the DEREFERENCING operator "->". You probably wanted: `$hashofstates{$key}` [download] Also note the use of Curly brackets (Not parens) to contain hash keys. "You're only given one little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it." - Robin Williams	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Error hash declaration by sidsinha (Acolyte) on Aug 30, 2014 at 00:23 UTC
Thankyou!	[reply]
Re: Error hash declaration by AppleFritter (Vicar) on Aug 30, 2014 at 09:37 UTC
Global symbol "$hashpfstates" requires explicit package name Look closely: it says "hashpfstates", not "hashofstates". So in addition to what NetWallah said, you have (or had) a typo there.	[reply]
Re: Error hash declaration by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Aug 30, 2014 at 17:12 UTC
`$hashofstates->($key) = $val;` FWIW, this statement attempts to de-reference `$hashofstates` as a subroutine reference, invoking it and passing `$key` to it as an argument, and to assign `$val` to an lvalue exposed (if that's the right terminology) by the subroutine. All of this is possible in another Perl code-world, but as others have written, with the OPed code it's na'gonna happen.	[reply] [d/l] [select]