The answer the OP was seeking has been well-demonstrated already. However, in attempting to come up with examples to show him why this behaves the way it does, I came across some very interesting behavior.

#!/usr/bin/perl -lw
my %hash = qw(a b c d d c b a);

foreach my $key (%hash) {
  print $key;
  delete $hash{$key};
}
# output:
# c
#
# a
# Segmentation fault (core dumped)

foreach my $key (%hash) {
  print $key;
  delete $hash{"$key"};
}
# same output with seg fault

foreach my $key ( @{[%hash]} ) {
  print $key;
  delete $hash{$key};
}
# output:
# c
# d
# a
# b
# b
# a
# d
# c

[download]

I've tried it in both 5.6.1 and 5.8.0. From my understanding of hashes, this ought to work since according to perldoc -f delete the delete should just return undef if the hash element doesn't exist.

antirice    
The first rule of Perl club is - use Perl
The ith rule of Perl club is - follow rule i - 1 for i > 1

In reply to Re: Hashes: Deleting elements while iterating by antirice
in thread Hashes: Deleting elements while iterating by knexus

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