Folks, as lovely and complete as your responses were, they were merely explanations for the differences between %hash{} and $hash->{}. My question, however, was what is the advantage of using one over the other? Obviously, there are contextual sitautions where you are supposed to use one instead of the other, but in cases where you are just creating a dynamically growing hash, does it matter which?

If the question is still too simple to answer one way or another, how about answering this: under what conditions is one more efficient memory-wise, performance-wise, or otherwise?

Independently of that question, let me throw in this: I have a text file that I parse with perl and build hashes based on that data. Think of it as a cross-referencing dataset with references pointing every which way. In order to avoid reparsing this each and every time the program starts up (it'll be a cgi script, and the data it reads is static), what would be the best way to just dump the hashes into a file and load it back up in one swell foop so as to optimize performance? Would the above "Dumper" package be a good choice? And in this case, would I want to use the hash reference form discussed above?

dan

In reply to Re^4: when is "my" not necessary? by argv
in thread when is "my" not necessary? by argv

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