• How do you know it didn't work?
• Are you really, really sure it didn't work?
• Are you using "strict" and "warnings"?
• You say "seems to work": have you checked the structure with Data::Dumper just to be sure?

rdfield

I created what I think is an array of hash references like this: push @{$infilestore{$id}}, (split //, $seq);

What you've got is a hash of array references. Each key ($id) in %infilestore points to a value which is a reference to an array. Thus, in your code above you are dereferencing the array and appending the values you get from splitting $seq

To clear the hash, you can say undef(%infilestore) or %infilestore = (), or foreach over the keys using delete to clear that entry (not recommended if you just want to get rid of everything though <update>for reasons of efficiency</update>).

Thanks for the help guys. The hash of array references definition
makes sense.

I was trying a foreach approach to clear %infilestore, but when
I closed an old file (clearing the hash, I hoped) and opened
a new file, the two would concatenate together - ie. the
hash would be added to but initial values wern't cleared.

%infilestore=(); is doing the trick, thanks fever. Why is using foreach
not recommended if you want to delete everything,
I would've thought it would do the job fine but apparently not.
Thanks again,
basm101

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my @thing = qw(a c g i t);

for my $id (1..5) {
   my (%infilestore,$seq);

   $seq .= @thing[rand @thing] for 0..2;

   push @{$infilestore{$id}}, (split //, $seq);
   print Dumper \%infilestore;
}
[download]

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

You're trying to empty a hash? Try this.

%infilestore = ();
[download]

Since he wrote $infilestore{SOMEKEY}, he is indeed working on %infilestore, which is not an unrelated hash at all.

Makeshifts last the longest.