in reply to Re: quick question about hash element access
in thread quick question about hash element access

added to your code so it can take a variable length identifier, and accept the hashref.

my %test_hash;
$test_hash{'a'}{'b'}{'c'}{'d'} = "Yay";
print get_id(\%test_hash, "a.b.c.d"), "\n";

sub get_id
{
    my $thingy = shift;
    my @keys = split /\./, shift;
    
    foreach my $key ( @keys )
    {
        $thingy =  $$thingy{$key};
    }
    return $thingy;
    
}

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Re: Re: Re: quick question about hash element access
by Nkuvu (Priest) on Jun 27, 2003 at 21:45 UTC

    Interesting. But I have a question (not being totally fluent in references).

    What exactly does the $thingy = $$thingy{$key} line do? My guess is that it assigns a scalar value referred to by the reference which is contained in $thingy{$key}. But I'm not even sure that sentence makes sense, much less if it's accurate. :)

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      you are correct sir-
      we are assigning $thingy to the value of whatever is refered to by $thingy{'a'}, in this case, it's the next hashref. this assignment is just repeated a few times till we're all out of keys.

      what's bad about this is that it assumes the caller will pass in a valid path. i guess error checking will be left up to OP...
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      $$thingy{$key} is equal to $thingy->{$key}, so it returns the value corresponding to the key $key in the hash pointed to by the reference $thingy.
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