There are many ways to get perl to consume all available memory -- and some, like the method discussed here -- are quick and easy. Well, heck, these things happen, and "a good way to avoid them" is, as you have said, to keep thing simple and not code wrong.

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

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