It's for both debugging and to clarify the output. Since this will go into a report, I'll need a lookup hash mapping the variable names with userfriendly descriptions, but initially, just the variable names should do.

I thought it might help if I posted my code, to show the context. Here it is:


sub GetStats {
        my $ref_files = shift @_;
        my (%lkup_by_who, %lkup_by_how, %lkup_by_from, %lkup_by_ftp);

        foreach my $file (@$ref_files) {
                open "LAST", "<", $file
                        or croak "Cannot open file $file - $!\n";
                print "Reading file $file ... \n";
                while (<LAST>) {
                        my ($who, $how, $from, @junk) = split (/\s+/);
                        next if (!$who or !$how or !$from);
                        next if (/wtmp begins/);
                        if ($how eq "console") {
                                $how = $from;
                                next;
                        }
                        $from =~ s/:\d+(\.\d+)?//g;
                        $lkup_by_who{$file}{"$who"}++;
                        $lkup_by_from{$file}{"$from"}++;
                        if ($how eq "ftp") {
                                $lkup_by_ftp{$file}{"$who"}++;
                        }
                }
                close (LAST);
        }
        return (\%lkup_by_who, \%lkup_by_from, \%lkup_by_ftp);
}

[download]
As you can see, it returns an array of hash of hashes. To avoid unnecessary complexity, I want to avoid putting it in one big hash, with keys 'who', 'from', and 'ftp'. Can I tell perl to output the variable names %lkup_by_who, \%lkup_by_from, \%lkup_by_ftp? I know that these variables are only defined within the subroutine, and so I'd have to put it in one big hash or print the information within the subroutine for it work.

-- Burvil

In reply to Re^2: Print name of variable to STDOUT? by bowei_99
in thread Print name of variable to STDOUT? by bowei_99

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