The problem is that you are using a reference as index in an array. A reference used in numeric context returns the memory address of whatever this is pointing to. This usually is a big number, which means that Perl is going to create an array large enough to index on that position. Which will result in allocating lots of memory.

The effects are system dependent, and if you have lots of memory, and the reference happens to be a relative low address, you might even be lucky enough that Perl will be able to allocate the memory.

Abigail

In reply to Re: Perl eats all memory when accessing hash/array refs wrong by Abigail-II
in thread Perl eats all memory when accessing hash/array refs wrong by jmo

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