I have slightly modified the script to return a hash reference which has keys as the "search parameter value" and values as "the corresponding key of the search parameter".

If i pass a single hash ref to delve() , the expected output is returned. However, if i pass successive hash refs to delve() , the returned hash ref is a cumulative hash which has key-value pairs from previous function calls too.

I need the delve function to return the the hash corresponding to input hash and not a cumulative one.

I tried declaring the return hash with "my" but it does not work as the function is recursive.

The modified code for delve is mentioned below : 

sub delve {
    my ($ref, $key) = @_;

    #my $key_val;

    if ('ARRAY' eq ref $ref) {
        for my $element (@$ref) {
            if ($key) {
                delve ($element, $key);
            } elsif (ref $element) {
                delve ($element)
            }
        }

        return ;
    }

    if ('HASH' eq ref ($ref)) {
        for my $nestedKey (keys %$ref) {
            my $value = $ref->{$nestedKey};

             if ($nestedKey =~ /^-|\w/) {
                delve ($value, $nestedKey)
            } else {
                delve ($value, $key)
            }
        }

        return $key_val;
    }

    return if ref $ref; # Some other reference type - ignore it

    if ($key) {
        printf "%22s: %s\n", $ref, $key;

        $key_val->{$ref} = $key;
        return $key_val;

    }
}

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In reply to Re^2: Recursive search in nested hash for selective keys by perlpal
in thread Recursive search in nested hash for selective keys by perlpal

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