This is a situation where strictures would have been useful for you. If you run your posted code with strict, Perl gives you the error: 

Global symbol "@arr_ref" requires explicit package name at fluff.pl li
+ne 12.
Execution of fluff.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

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When you write #arr_ref, Perl examines the array @arr_ref, which you never defined. Since it is not defined, its highest index is -1. The expression you intended is likely $#$arr_ref, which returns 7 as desired. The following code does what I assume you intended, with strict and warnings thrown in for good measure: 

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @arr_val=(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8);
my $arr_ref=\@arr_val;

print $$arr_ref[-1];
print "\n";
print $$arr_ref[@$arr_ref-1];
print "\n";
print $#arr_val;
print "\n";
print $#$arr_ref;

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See perfreftut or perfref for more information on references, and see Use strict warnings and diagnostics or die for a howto and why for use strict; use warnings;.

In reply to Re: Print last element using perl reference by kennethk
in thread Print last element using perl reference by gobisankar

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