Coding style is about writing code for maintainability.Computers may be able to read that and discern that you attempted to dereference a scalar. But humans get head-aches looking at it.

Compare what you offered, above, with:

my ( $my_tgid_list, $my_switchClli_list, $my_btfn_list );
my ( $my_custClli_list, $my_trkCount_list, $ $my_ldn_list);
my ( $my_location_list, $my_status_list, $my_flag_list);
my ( $eachrow, $tmp_tgid, $tmp_switchClli, $tmp_btfn);
my ( $tmp_custClli, $tmp_trkCount, $tmp_ldn);
my ( $tmp_location, $tmp_flag );

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or

my ( $my_tgid_list, $my_switchClli_list);
my ( $my_btfn_list, $my_custClli_list );
my ( $my_trkCount_list, $ $my_ldn_list);
my ( $my_location_list, $my_status_list);
my ( $my_flag_list, $eachrow);
my ( $tmp_tgid, $tmp_switchClli);
my ( $tmp_btfn, $tmp_custClli);
my ( $tmp_trkCount, $tmp_ldn);
my ( $tmp_location, $tmp_flag );

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that code would give you an error identified by a line number which would not tax the attention span to decipher. (Speaking of which, will variable names like $tmp_btfn mean enough to you six months from now when you next look at this, that you won't have to decipher it?) Indeed, the very visual presentation of the code might have helped the human writing it to see the attempt to derefence $ $my_ldn_list, when coding the next line or three. I hadn't realized that the compiler would discard that extra space.

There is a lot I am still learning about how this compiler thingy works. I'm not a real perl hacker, like those folks who keep refactoring perl5 to make it into perl6. I'm just the kind of perl hacker who reads perldocs and learns how to use the perl5 that Creation and Its Servants saw fit to make available to help us get our job done. I'm finally starting to understand that if I can read it the computer can too.

-- Hugh

In reply to Re: Scalar dereference error by hesco
in thread Scalar dereference error by Anonymous Monk

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