in reply to Deleting undef values from a hash

Not all undefs are created equal: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;

our %foo;
@foo{'foo','baz'} = ();
for my $key ('foo','bar','baz') {
   print "key $key ",
         (\undef == \delete $foo{$key} ? "didn't exist" : "existed"),
         "\n";
}

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Doesn't work for tied hashes or magic hashes such as %SIG or %ENV.

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Re: Re: Deleting undef values from a hash
by tilly (Archbishop) on Dec 14, 2003 at 23:25 UTC
    I think that you'll have a hard time finding that documented. ;-) (Though I have a pretty good idea why it works.)

    I also wouldn't want to trust it across Perl versions. That seems very specific to perl5, and I would not plan on that specific optimization finding its way into Ponie for instance.

[reply]
      It should be ok for perl5, though. The division of responsibilities between hv_delete_* and pp_delete pretty much require that it work. hv_delete_* will return null if the key didn't exist, which pp_delete will replace with the immortal undef value. If the key did exist, hv_delete_* will return the value (even undef) in a different sv.

      It's obviously better practice to check exists in the first place, outside of obfuscation and golf.

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