To give a little more information in addition to holli's answer: foreach (@testarray) loops over the array and assigns each element to $_, plus that iterator variable $_ is an alias to each original element of the array (see Foreach Loops), meaning that assigning to $_ changes the value in the original array. while (<DATA>) is actually while (defined($_ = readline DATA)) (I/O Operators), i.e. it is assigning to the same $_ variable.

If you use an explicit loop variable in the foreach, e.g. foreach my $elem (@testarray), the problem goes away, and you can also do the same in the while, e.g. while ( my $line = <DATA> ).

Update: Here you can see @testarray getting clobbered. The undef comes from the fact that <DATA> returns undef when it hits EOF (end of file).

use warnings;
use strict;
use Data::Dump;

my @testarray = ([10,20],[30,40]);

dd "A", @testarray;
foreach (@testarray) {
    dd "B", @testarray;
    while ( <DATA> ) {
        dd "C", @testarray;
    }
    dd "D", @testarray;
}
dd "E", @testarray;

__DATA__
hello
world

[download]

Output:

("A", [10, 20], [30, 40])
("B", [10, 20], [30, 40])
("C", "hello\n", [30, 40])
("C", "world\n", [30, 40])
("D", undef, [30, 40])
("B", undef, [30, 40])
("D", undef, undef)
("E", undef, undef)

[download]

In reply to Re: Arrays and Handles Problem (updated) by haukex
in thread Arrays and Handles Problem by Melly

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