Hi Michelle, welcome.

it appears to be dereferencing an array ...

Just for accurate terminology, you can't dereference an array: you dereference a scalar reference pointing to an array, thereby yielding the array.

LanX has explained why the syntax you have "prints the contents of the hash without looping." But if that's your goal, you might like Data::Dumper. (edit: which he mentioned in his update). This built-in module is used to "dump" the contents of data structures, sometimes into permanent storage, but most often just to see what's in the hash. 

use strict; use warnings; use feature 'say';
use Data::Dumper;

my %hash = (
    foo => 'bar',
    baz => 'qux',
);

say 'Hash: ' . Dumper %hash;

## Output:
# Hash: $VAR1 = 'foo';
# $VAR2 = 'bar';
# $VAR3 = 'baz';
# $VAR4 = 'qux';

say 'As hashref: ' . Dumper \%hash;

## Output:
# As hashref:  $VAR1 = {
#                  'foo' => 'bar',
#                  'baz' => 'qux'
#              };

[download]
Then there are various short ways to write a loop, if less typing is your goal (and a worthy goal it is). Here's a simple one, a "postfix for loop": 
say "$_ : $hash{ $_ }" for keys %hash;

[download]

Hope this helps!


The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

In reply to Re: Print the contents of a hash without looping. by 1nickt
in thread Print the contents of a hash without looping. by Anonymous Monk

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.