reading input into a number of arrays

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

Hi,

probably the code below is not the best way to do it, but it's something I understand (or at least I thought I understood). Intention is to read 3 lines of characters (say 1111111, 2222222, 3333333) and store them in a 2 dimensional array $a(1,1) through $a(3,7) (I know, I know, I should start from 0, but I don't think that's the issue).
The thing is, when I print the array inside the loop, I nicely get 1111111, 2222222, 3333333 as output. However, when I try to print outside the loop, I get 3 times my last input (3333333, 3333333, 3333333).
I don't understand how this happens. Please enlighten me.
TIA
Please note, the square brackets around the indices were lost in translation somewhere, the syntax is hence not the problem.

for ($i=1;$i<=3;$i++)
 {
  $ingang=<>;
  chomp $ingang;

  ($a[$i,1],$a[$i,2],$a[$i,3],$a[$i,4],$a[$i,5],$a[$i,6],$a[$i,7])=spl
+it('',$ingang);
 }

print "Resultaat\n";

for ($p=1;$p<=3;$p++)
 {
  for ($j=1;$j<=7;$j++)
   {
    print $a[$p,$j];
   }
  print "\n";
 }
[download]

Node formatting cleaned up by GrandFather

Comment on reading input into a number of arrays Download Code

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Re: reading input into a number of arrays by choroba (Cardinal) on Feb 25, 2020 at 16:07 UTC
Perl doesn't support the comma separated indices for multidimensional arrays. Instead of `$a[$i, 1]` [download] use `$a[$i][1]` [download] Update: Use warnings, Perl will tell you: `Multidimensional syntax $a[$i,1] not supported at ...` [download] `map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]\|\|0,1}[\\|\|{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^ARGV,3]`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: reading input into a number of arrays by tobyink (Canon) on Feb 25, 2020 at 21:41 UTC
You can emulate multi-dimentional arrays with hashes though. It's a feature not many people use. `my %multidim; my $x = 3; my $y = 4; $multidim{ $x, $y } = 42; print $multidim{ $x, $y }, "\n";` [download] toby döt ink	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: reading input into a number of arrays by Dannypje (Initiate) on Feb 25, 2020 at 16:11 UTC
Choroba, thanks! I knew this. My shame is infinite.	[reply]
Re: reading input into a number of arrays by johngg (Canon) on Feb 25, 2020 at 16:30 UTC
A simpler way to populate your AoA avoiding C-style loops. `use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; open my $inFH, q{<}, \ <<__EOD__ or die $!; 1111111 2222222 3333333 __EOD__ my @AoA; my $x = 0; while ( <$inFH> ) { chomp; $AoA[ $x ++ ] = [ undef, split m{} ]; } close $inFH or die $!; print Data::Dumper->Dumpxs( [ \ @AoA ], [ qw{ AoA } ] );` [download] The output. `@AoA = ( [ undef, '1', '1', '1', '1', '1', '1', '1' ], [ undef, '2', '2', '2', '2', '2', '2', '2' ], [ undef, '3', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3' ] );` [download] I hope this is useful. Update:* Even simpler would be to use push and avoid the counter entirely. `use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; open my $inFH, q{<}, \ <<__EOD__ or die $!; 1111111 2222222 3333333 __EOD__ my @AoA; while ( <$inFH> ) { chomp; push @AoA, [ undef, split m{} ]; } close $inFH or die $!; print Data::Dumper->Dumpxs( [ \ @AoA ], [ qw{ *AoA } ] );` [download] Cheers, JohnGG	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: reading input into a number of arrays by BillKSmith (Monsignor) on Feb 26, 2020 at 22:46 UTC
Strictly speaking, Perl does not support multidimensional arrays. There are at least two ways that they can be simulated. tobyink has demonstrated the hash method documented in perldata. The other is documented in the "Arrays of Arrays" section of perldsc. The first has the advantage that the source code looks more the way we expect. The other, works the way we come to expect Perl to work. Here is a solution to your problem using slices (only available in the second method ref perldata). `use strict; use warnings; my $infile = \do{my $chars = "1111111\n2222222\n3333333\n"}; open my $FH, '<', $infile or die "Cannot open input"; my @a; for my $i (1..3) { my $ingang = <$FH>; chomp $ingang; $a[$i] = [undef, split //, $ingang]; } for my $p (1..3) { print @{$a[$p]}[1..7], "\n"; }` [download] `OUTPUT: 1111111 2222222 3333333` [download] Bill	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: reading input into a number of arrays by Anonymous Monk on Feb 26, 2020 at 15:57 UTC
As for why the original code did what it did: It looks like Perl parsed the comma-delimited list of subscripts as a Perl list, which it then evaluated in scalar context to get the subscript. When a list is evaluated in scalar context it yields its last element. So `$a[$i,1]` was seen as `$a[1]`. All of this would probably have puzzled you much less if you had started your script with `use strict; use warnings;` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]