I used the following subs in a program to dereference hash and array refs...

#  dereference an array or an hash
sub de_ref
{
  return  
    map { ref $_ eq 'ARRAY' 
          ? de_aref( $_ )
          : ref $_ eq 'HASH'
            ? de_aref( de_href($_) )
            : $_    
        }       
      @_;     
}

#  dereference an array ref, if any
sub de_aref 
{ return
    map {ref $_ eq 'ARRAY' ? (@{$_}) : ($_)} @_;
}

#  dereference an hash ref, if any
sub de_href 
{ return
    map {ref $_ eq 'HASH' ? (sort values %$_) : ($_) } @_;
}

[download]

...i was wondering if anybody has any comments on it. One improvment that is most obivious is using proper recursion (which i am working on (soft of)) in de_ref().

In reply to dereferencing hash & array refs by parv

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.