Hi, I'm trying to do some troubleshooting on a hash, so am trying to figure out what the scalar function (without keys) does:

For instance, the following code 

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Data::Dumper;

%h = (
  1 => "one",
    2 => "two",
    3 => "",
    4 => "four",
#  5 => "five",
 );

print "h is " . scalar %h . "\n";

print "Dump is " . Dumper(\%h);

[download]
yields 
# perl test.pl
h is 4/8
Dump is $VAR1 = {
          '1' => 'one',
          '2' => 'two',
          '3' => '',
          '4' => 'four'
        };

[download]
So, from experimenting with this code by commenting out elements in %h, I figure the first value is the number of keys, but I'm not sure what the second value is. It stays at 8 no matter what I change. I remember vaguely it has something to do with how densely the hash is populated.... Can anybody tell me what it is?

-- Burvil

In reply to Effect of scalar function on hash by bowei_99

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