Hello colleagues,

I am in the process of "enhancing" someone else's code. There is an array of hashes and I need to be able to reference an array element in it - the hash. I tried something like that:

#!/usr/bin/perl
my @array;
$array[0]{'key'} = "testline";
$item = \$array[0];
$array[0]{'key2'} = "testline2";

[download]

However, the $item can not be properly dereferenced for some reason. Here is the debugger session:

[me@system directory]$ perl -d aht.pl

Loading DB routines from perl5db.pl version 1.19
Editor support available.

Enter h or `h h' for help, or `man perldebug' for more help.

main::(aht.pl:2):       my @array;
  DB<1> b 5
  DB<2> c
main::(aht.pl:5):       $array[0]{'key2'} = "testline2";
  DB<2> p $array[0]{'key'}
testline
  DB<3> p $array[0]
HASH(0x8086ab4)
  DB<4> p $$item
HASH(0x8086ab4)
  DB<5> p $$item{'key'}
Not a HASH reference at (eval 10)[/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/perl5db.pl:17] 
+line 2.

  DB<6> q
[me@system directory]$

[download]

As one can see, $item is a proper reference, but it needs a cast of some sort. My experiments were unsuccessful - anyone have a hint?

Sincerely,
Vlad.

In reply to Reference to a hash in an array of hashes by vlad

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