If there are any key/value pairs, it returns true; more precisely, the value returned is a string consisting of the number of used buckets and the number of allocated buckets, separated by a slash. This is pretty much useful only to find out whether Perl's internal hashing algorithm is performing poorly on your data set.

I wrote it before and I'm repeating it here, again without proper attribution (anyone here?) nor the certainty of quoting it really correctly: "the value of a hash in scalar context is of no use to a Perl programmer, only to a perl programmer."

In reply to Re^2: Seeking explanation on assigning a hash to a scalar by blazar
in thread Seeking explanation on assigning a hash to a scalar by jesuashok

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