You are dereferencing: You have an array of hashes (or, more correctly an array of references to hashes) in @pages, so $_ in the map is a reference to a hash.

This is partially hidden by the normal syntax, because perl is smart enough to realise when you type $pages[1]{id} you mean $pages[1]->{id}. (Because there is no other way element 1 of @pages could be a hash: Arrays can only hold scalars, and they only way to get a hash into a scalar is to use a reference.)

In reply to Re: Not understanding the arrow operator by DStaal
in thread Not understanding the arrow operator by bradcathey

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