Below is the code I wrote in one of my Perl modules that would allow me to query a MySQL table using DBI, and get back every row.

It does work, but I myself have a problem reading it, and to be honest, even understanding each level where I have to dereference a a reference that needed to be dereferenced.

I'm not even sure I understand what I've written, and therefore not even sure I did it properly.

I'm talking about the lines:

foreach my $rows (@{$data}) {
   my @newArray = @{$rows};

Could I have written it better, cleaner, or safer?


###### from my Perl pm module
our @ticketsFields = qw( ... every column in my table...);
### number of columns
our $ticketsFieldsSize = @ticketsFields;
our @ticketsRecords;

sub getTicketsRecords {
    ### my conditional arguments 
    ### to be used in WHERE and AND
    my (...multiple args... ) = @_;

    ### build select command
    ### grabbing every column
    my $dbCommand = qq^select ^;
    foreach (@ticketsFields) {
        $dbCommand .= "$_,";
    }
    $dbCommand =~ s/,$//;

    ### and the conditional arguments passed in
    $dbCommand .= ... 

    ### execute command
    ### get the data
    $dbHandle=$db->prepare($dbCommand);
    $dbHandle->execute();
    my $data = $dbHandle->fetchall_arrayref();
    $dbHandle->finish;

    ### go throught every row, in the reference array
    foreach my $rows (@{$data}) {
            
            ### dereference the first/next row
            my @newArray = @{$rows};
            
            ### create a blank hash
            my %GenericData;
            
            ### loop through the new row
            ### for every column in the table
            for(my $x = 0; $x < $ticketsFieldsSize; $x++)
            {
                ### assign the key and value in the hash
                $GenericData{$ticketsFields[$x]} = $newArray[$x];
            }
            
            ### add reference to has to an array
            push @ticketsRecords, \%GenericData;
        }
     
     ### pass back a reference to my array of hash references
     return \@ticketsRecords;
}

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In reply to Is there a cleaner way to write this code below, which includes derferencing references, that themselves have to be dereferenced? by bartender1382

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