There are two small problems with this code - The first is that you have called the subroutine depth yet reference it within the subroutine as dimensions. Has anyone ever told you that recursion is evil? :-)

Also, if the subroutine is called with something other than an array reference, it still returns a count of 1.

 

Update

This code addresses the issues above and returns the correct reference depth of the array.

sub depth {
    return 0 unless ref $_[0] eq 'ARRAY';
    return depth( ${$_[0]}[0] ) + 1;
}

[download]

Or alternatively, without recursion ...

sub depth {
    my $array = shift;
    my $count = 0;
    while (ref $array eq 'ARRAY') {
        $array = ${$array}[0];
        ++$count;
    }
    return $count;
}

[download]

 

Update

Okay ... So I was curious and went ahead and benchmarked these subroutines and was pleasantly surprised with the result.

Benchmark: timing 100000 iterations of loop, recursion...
      loop:  6 wallclock secs ( 5.30 usr +  0.00 sys =  5.30 CPU) @ 18
+867.92/s (n=100000)
 recursion:  6 wallclock secs ( 5.87 usr +  0.00 sys =  5.87 CPU) @ 17
+035.78/s (n=100000)

[download]

 

And the code used for the benchmarking ...

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Benchmark;
use strict;

timethese (100000, {
    'recursion' =>  q!
        sub depth {
            return 0 unless ref $_[0] eq 'ARRAY';
            return depth( ${$_[0]}[0] ) + 1;
        };

        my $array = [ [ [ 1 ], [ 1 ] ], [ [ 1 ], [ 1 ] ]];
        my $result = depth($array);
    !,
    'loop'      =>  q!
        sub depth {
            my $array = shift;
            my $count = 0;
            while (ref $array eq 'ARRAY') {
                $array = ${$array}[0];
                ++$count;
            }
            return $count;
        }

        my $array = [ [ [ 1 ], [ 1 ] ], [ [ 1 ], [ 1 ] ]];
        my $result = depth($array);
    !
});

[download]
perl -e 's&&rob@cowsnet.com.au&&&split/[@.]/&&s&.com.&_&&&print'

In reply to Re: Depth of AoAs by rob_au
in thread Depth of AoAs by CharlesClarkson

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