problem with le and gt

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

I've been hacking at a bit of code for a bit now and am pretty well (brain faded) stumped. I'm getting an "not an array reference at line <line>" error.

i'm getting the error when attempting to work out if one number is greater than another

1) print "email:  ${$self->{_product}}->[0]{EMAIL} \n";
2) print "total: (scalar(keys  %{$self->{_alllogins}}))\n";
3) if (  ${$self->{_product}}->[0]{EMAIL} > (scalar(keys %{$self->{_al
+llogins}})) ) {
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lines 1 and 2 (above) evaluate to 5, 7 respectivley.
The interesting bit is if i reverse the operator the error goes away, (but is not condition i am after).
i've even tried:

1) my $allowable = scalar( ${$self->{_product}}->[0]{EMAIL});
2) my $current   = (scalar(keys  %{$self->{_alllogins}}));
3) if ($current ge $allowable) {
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to no avail. I just cant work out why, when i reverse the condition, the error message goes away. I'm using 5.005_03. Someone please tell me i've got a wet fish problem here... :-)

.R

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Re: problem with le and gt by Ryszard (Priest) on Sep 13, 2001 at 10:29 UTC
ok after just 5 seconds of looking at my code, a co-worker mentioned the problem was in the 'else' part of the code. yes i feel like an idiot. my problem was perl was reporting back the line number of the 'if' and the error was about 20 lines down in the 'else' part. /me chalks one up to experience.	[reply]