in reply to Re^2: getting headers from essage
in thread getting headers from essage

A fluke.

You're using a key-value hash slice, which is used to obtain a list of key-value pairs from a hash.

$ perl -e' use v5.36; my %h = ( a => 1, b => 2, c => 3, d => 4 ); say for %h{qw( a b )}; ' a 1 b 2

That's not possible in scalar context. In scalar context, it returns the value of the last key.

$ perl -e' use v5.36; my %h = ( a => 1, b => 2, c => 3, d => 4 ); say scalar( %h{qw( a b )} ); ' 2

In other words, it performs a simple hash lookup in scalar context. If you want to perform a hash lookup, it's much clearer to use a hash lookup instead of key-value hash slice.

$ perl -e' use v5.36; my %h = ( a => 1, b => 2, c => 3, d => 4 ); say $h{ b }; ' 2

In context, you used @{ %$hashref{ "To" } } aka @{ %{ $hashref }{ "To" } } aka @{ $hashref->%{ "To" } } aka $hashref->%{ "To" }->@* when it would have been clearer to use @{ $$hashref{ To } } aka @{ ${ $hashref }{ To } } aka @{ $hashref->{ To } } aka $hashref->{ To }->@*. There's already enough ways of doing this that it's easy to say it's wrong to add another level of complexity.


Update: s/hash slice/key-value hash slice/g, as per LanX's reply.

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Re^4: getting headers from essage
by LanX (Saint) on Dec 16, 2025 at 20:44 UTC
    > You're using a hash slice,

    Worse, it's the new extended kind which returns key-value pairs, forgot the terminology for it °

    DB<23> $hr= { To => [qw/a b c/] } DB<24> x %$hr{To} 0 'To' 1 ARRAY(0x55ef21ab6818) 0 'a' 1 'b' 2 'c' DB<25> x @$hr{To} # classic hash slice 0 ARRAY(0x55ef21ab6818) 0 'a' 1 'b' 2 'c' DB<26> x @{%$hr{To}} # only "works" with one hash key 0 'a' 1 'b' 2 'c'

    update

    interestingly even the documentation of this module is faulty

    https://metacpan.org/dist/Mail-IMAPClient/view/lib/Mail/IMAPClient.pod#parse_headers

        "To"      => [ "Big Shot <big.shot@bigco.com> ] ,

    (spot the missing " )

    I think the OP should use Data::Dumper or Data::Dump to inspect the $hashref and isolate his problem.

    Cheers Rolf
    (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
    see Wikisyntax for the Monastery

    °) apparently key-value-slice since the "new" (cough) 5.20 ... wait... perldoc says Key/Value-Hash-Slice

      Yes, sorry, that's what I meant and clearly demonstrated.

        Sure, I just wanted to highlight why it looked so weird.

        But the question remains if Perl shouldn't better throw a warning if there's a list inside a dereference.

        I can't see any reason why not, except backwards compatibility to bad code which fails on warnings (convoluted case tho)

        Cheers Rolf
        (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
        see Wikisyntax for the Monastery