trying to use strict :(

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

Hi, I'm trying to populate/create an array of hashes, basics of the code is as follows.

my @day;
my @night;
my @ip;
my $day = "someday";
my $start "some start time";
my $start "some end time";

foreach my $task((qw/day night ip/)){
 my %hash=();
 $hash{$day}{'start'}=$start;
 $hash{$day}{'end'}=$end;
 push @{$task},{%hash};
}
[download]

($day, $start and $end are in this case are predefined. In the script they would be defined from values taken from a file)

My understanding of perl and references is a little flaky. What I "assumed" would happen is that the hash (%hash) would be put in to the three arrays @day, @night, and @ip creating an array of hashes. But for some reason they are not.

What I would like to know is
what I need to do to make strict happy without using

no strict "refs";

and
where are the hashes being stored?

Thanks
Mark.

Comment on trying to use strict :( Download Code

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Re: trying to use strict :( by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Jul 16, 2003 at 11:07 UTC
Essentially you are trying to create a hash-like operation using the horrible symbolic references. I would suggest that you use are real hash with array references as values: `... my %tasks = ( day => [], night => [], ip => [] ); ... foreach my $task ( keys %tasks ) { ... push @{$tasks{$task}},\%hash; }` [download] And then strict will be happy and you will have cleaner code. Check out perlref for more on references. /J\	[reply] [d/l]
Re: trying to use strict :( by davorg (Chancellor) on Jul 16, 2003 at 11:00 UTC
I'm going to assume that these two lines are just typos. `my $start "some start time"; my $start "some end time";` [download] It always helps us if you cut and paste your code into your question rather than trying to retype it. Other than that, your problem is the line: `push @{$task},{%hash};` You are trying to use `$task` as a symbolic reference. Symbolic references can be rather dangerous so they are one of the things that `use strict` marks as illegal. I'm not entirely sure what data structure you're trying to build, so I can't really suggest an alternative without more information. -- <http://www.dave.org.uk> "The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club." -- Chip Salzenberg	[reply] [d/l] [select]