perl -le '$foo{"bar"} = ["a","b"]; print ref $foo{"bar"}'
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What are you expecting to see in your output? Hashes are not interpolated into strings, but arrays are, so printing "Array in Array item: @$item" should print the array elements in $item. A clearer way would be a foreach loop or map, perhaps like this:

    if (ref $item eq 'ARRAY') {
        print "Array in Array item:\n";
        foreach (@$item) {
            print "    $_\n";
        }
    }
    elsif (ref $item eq 'HASH') {
        print "Hash in Array item:\n";
        foreach (keys %$item) {
            print "    $_ -> $item->{$_}\n";
        }
    }
    else {
        print "Array Item: $item\n";
    }
[download]

-- Mike

--
just,my${.02}

The following is what I ended up doing. Part of the problem here was that I didn't know exactly what the data was (maintaining someone else's 12k lines of perl w/ almost no comments is a b****) and I still don't know where some of it is coming from. Any suggestions for improvement would be appreciated.

The data was arranged:


%::Volume_Info = {
            0,
            512,
            1048576,
            1,
            %spindles = {
                    0 => ARRAY
                    1 => ARRAY
                    2 => ARRAY
                    3 => ARRAY
                },
            [ ARRAY ],
            %copy_pool = {
                    0 => [ ARRAY, 0, 0, 1]
                },
            -1,
            0,
            0,
            0,
        }
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for my $vol_key ( keys %::Volume_Info ) {
        print "Volume " . ref($::Volume_Info{$vol_key}) . "\n";
        foreach my $item ( $::Volume_Info{$vol_key} ) {
            if (ref($item) eq "ARRAY") {
                foreach my $item2 (@$item) {
                    if (ref($item2) eq "ARRAY") {
                        foreach my $ar_el (@$item2) {
                            print "array_element: @$ar_el\n";
                        }
                    } elsif (ref($item2) eq "HASH") {
                        foreach my $hash_key (keys %$item2){
                            print "\t hash key: $hash_key\n";  
                            if (ref($$item2{$hash_key}) eq "ARRAY") {
                                foreach my $item3 ($$item2{$hash_key})
+ {
#                                    if (ref($item3) eq "ARRAY") {
#                                        foreach my $an_el (@$item3) {
#                                            print "\t\t\tanother elem
+ent @$an_el\n";
#                                        }
#                                    } else {
                                        print "\t\tspindle values: @$i
+tem3\n";
                                    #}
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    } else {
                        print "Array Item: $item2 \n";
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
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Ohhhh... well if you're just trying to see what someone else's data looks like, have you considered using Data::Dumper instead? It makes something like that very easy.

use Data::Dumper;

my %Volume_Info = ( alpha => [ 0, 512, 1048576, 1,
                               { one => 'first_hash' },
                               [ 'two', 'first_array' ],
                               { three => 'second_hash' },
                               -1, 0, 'zfod', 0 ],
                    beta  => [ 1, 2, { four => 'third_hash' },
                               2, 1 ] );

print Dumper(\%Volume_Info);
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...which produces...

$VAR1 = {
          'beta' => [
                      1,
                      2,
                      {
                        'four' => 'third_hash'
                      },
                      2,
                      1
                    ],
          'alpha' => [
                       0,
                       512,
                       1048576,
                       1,
                       {
                         'one' => 'first_hash'
                       },
                       [
                         'two',
                         'first_array'
                       ],
                       {
                         'three' => 'second_hash'
                       },
                       -1,
                       0,
                       'zfod',
                       0
                     ]
        };
[download]

Not sure if this fits your purposes, but I felt it was worth mentioning (especially after misleading you with my first response).

-Bird