Hello and thank you again for your time.

I have been trying to figure this out for a few hours now. Arrays, hashes, array of hashes, hash of arrays, etc., they have always been confusing for me.

I am reading a small XML file with 6 values.

$VAR1 = {
          'version' => '2.0',
          'xmlns:media' => 'http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/',
          'fileSet' => {
                       'time' => '1499387013',
                       'fileName' => 'Atlanta_Regency.gif',
                       'emailAddress' => 'johndoe@gmail.com',
                       'requesterName' => 'John Doe',
                       'showAbbreviation' => {},
                       'zoneColor' => '0'
                     }
        };

[download]

Only 'showAbbreviation' may or may not be empty. All others will always have a value. I've tried this...

my $showAbbreviation = $current->{'fileSet'}->{'showAbbreviation'};
 if ( not defined $showAbbreviation ) {
        $showAbbreviation = "";
    }

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And this...

if (exists $current->{'fileSet'}->{'showAbbreviation'} ) {
    $showAbbreviation = $current->{'fileSet'}->{'showAbbreviation'};
    print "Yes: $showAbbreviation\n";
    } else {
    $showAbbreviation = "";
    print "No: $showAbbreviation\n";
    }

[download]

I thought one of those would do the trick, but it is giving me back a 'HASH(0xd6a9690)' type value instead of an empty String value. I've tried exists and defined and not defined etc., but nothing is giving me the response I want.

What am I missing? This should be fairly easy I would think. Please help me understand, and thank you!

In reply to If hash not defined help by johnfl68

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