First, if you want to use the term 'geezers', I recommend you don't use nonsense text speak like 'sez'. Us 'geezers' prefer real language :P

Next, on 5.10, your code apparently works for me, without knowing what you're expecting... it runs without error:

$ perl x.pl
THIRD: 0188 - 0000007777 - 40
THIRD: 0188 - 0000009980 - 41
THIRD: 0123 - 0000008888 - 50
THIRD: 0123 - 0000009999 - 51
[download]

Do you have code that doesn't work? What error do you get when you run it? Perhaps it's due to your example of [a, b, c]. Those are unquoted values you seem to be inserting into an array reference. That won't, and has never worked. Perhaps you meant [qw(a b c)] or [('a', 'b', 'c')], like this (still on 5.10):

use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dumper;

my %h;
my $itemArea = 1;
my $itemID = 1;

$h{$itemArea}{$itemID} = [qw(a b c)];

print Dumper \%h;
[download]

Output:

$VAR1 = {
          '1' => {
                   '1' => [
                            'a',
                            'b',
                            'c'
                          ]
                 }
        };
[download]

If the 5.24.x docs literally state: $something = [a,b,c], please let us know where, and I'll patch it.

Also, post your *exact* error, along with the *exact* code that triggers it.

FWIW,  [ a, b, c ] could also compile to an expression if subroutines  a() b() c() had been defined, but somehow I don't think that's what hennesse was going for.

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -MData::Dump -le
"sub a { return 'foo'; }
 sub b {               }
 sub c { return 'bar'; }
 ;;
 my $array_ref = [ a, b, c ];
 dd $array_ref;
"
["foo", "bar"]
[download]

(Note that  b() intentionally returns an empty list.)

---

Give a man a fish:  <%-{-{-{-<

For your local installation (if it's more or less standard), invoking
    perldoc perldsc
(or any other documentation module) from your friendly, local command line should get you the doc for your installed version. For the on-line documentation, there's a  Perl version -> Select drop-down in the top left corner of the page. Available versions go all the way back to 5.8.8.

$#{$thirdList{$area}}
[download]

But no matter what kind of casts and !@#$%^&* stuff I put in there (like $# @{ $thirdList{$area} }, I get a "$# is no longer supported" type of error

Sometimes, you need squigglies.

Alternately,

while (my ($area, $list) = each %thirdList) {
   foreach my $item (@$list) {
      print join(' - ', @$item), "\n";
   }
}
[download]

Thanks guys.

Mr. Anonymous - your squigglies worked like a champ, although I would swear I already tried them - and every other darn key on the keyboard too.

Stevieb - I'm sorry - precise language is important, but sometimes us "hep cats" who cut our teeth on GE 235*s with paper tape on a Teletype sometimes regress to the "flash cant" of aeons past.

I have had problems getting the knack of some of these complex data structures because there seems to have been a lot of changes since 5.12, and I could never get things to work reliably on different systems.

In case you're wondering, I'm working on a big improvement to the background search for: http://www.harleykmodel.com/craigslist

Dave

* http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/GE/GE.235.1964.102646091.pdf

Hi hennesse,

Many of the examples in the 5.24 perldsc just do not work.

... there seems to have been a lot of changes since 5.12

There have been a few changes since v5.12 (for example, the addition of the Postfix Dereference Syntax and Key/Value Hash Slices, and for a while there was the experimental and now-removed "autoderef" feature), but as far as I can remember they've all been backwards compatible (and perldsc hasn't had any significant changes in the code examples for 15 years). Could you point out the examples in perldsc that don't work for you?

Thanks,
-- Hauke D