1. For some reason, using your code I get... 
       ...
   \$foo -> oS
   ...
    which doesn't seem quite right.

  2. I gotta side with George_Sherston on this one, It's all about Data::Dumper. Here's what I can up with for generating the grammer described (I think it can handle any case the orriginal post did)... 
    sub my_describe {
    my $s = Dumper(@_);
    $s =~ s/\'[^\']*\'//g;  # eliminate scalars
    $s =~ s/[^\[\{\'\\]//g; # cut to the heart of the structure
    # + because we only care about one member of hashes/arrays
    $s =~ s/\[+/Ao/g;       
    $s =~ s/\{+/Ho/g;
    $s =~ s/\\+/r/g;
    return $s . "S";
}

    [download]
UPDATE: I just realized this can't handle something really basic: \\\\\\$foo. Oh well, that's why version numbers were invented

In reply to Re: Checking whether two variables have the same structure by hossman
in thread Checking whether two variables have the same structure by Corion

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.