Just a bit of elaboration on an excellent post.

The keys and values in hashes can only be scalars, you can't directly store a array as a value. But, you can store a refrence to a array in a hash (a reference is a scalar) which is what btrott's code does.

When you want to make a reference to another variable use the \ operator. 

my $ref_to_array  = \@an_array;
my $ref_to_hash   = \%a_hash;
my $ref_to_scalar = \$a_scalar;

[download]
Or if you don't want to make a variable and then make a reference, you can initialize them this way. 
my $ref_to_array = [1,2,3,4];
my $ref_to_hash  = { 'key1' => 'val1', 'key2' => 'val2' };
my $ref_to_scalar = \"some string\n";

[download]
The contents can be retrieved like: 
print $ref_to_array->[0];
print $ref_to_hash->{'some_key'};
print ${$ref_to_scalar};

[download]
All this stuff is explained in the o'reily (sp?) books in great detail. I'd suggest getting them. :)

/\/\averick

In reply to RE: Re: Using an array in a hash by maverick
in thread Using an array in a hash 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.