Dear Monks,

I'm struggeling with packages and eval ... here is my short example: 

package items;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
use Exporter;

my %items;
1; 

sub initItems
{
    $items{1}{Name} = "Rusty Sword";         # fine
    $items{2}{Value} = 2;                    # fine
    eval ("$items{3}{Value} = 2;");            # ERROR: Use of uniniti
+alized value in concatenation (.) or string at items.pm line 16.  (th
+is line)
    print( Data::Dumper->Dumpxs( [ \ %items ], [ qw{ *items } ] ));
}

[download]
When running it (calling items::initItems(); in my main program), I get the error mentioned above, and the output is: 
%items = (
           '1' => {
                    'Name' => 'Rusty Sword'
                  },
           '3' => {},
           '2' => {
                    'Value' => 2
                  }
         );

[download]
What is wrong? Why does the eval somehow access my hash, but does not add the value? Is it something obvious and I'm just blind today?

Thanks for help! Rata

In reply to Eval/package question by Ratazong

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.