Hi, I am currently working on my first perl program. Which would make this my first post here at perlmonks so take it easy on me :P

I am stuck on attempting to make an array of hashes, where each hash has both arrays(of scalars) and scalars within it. There error I am currently getting is:

Can't coerce array into hash at calcoverlap.pl line 222.

1 is {

here is where I set up the hash:

%imolecule = (
        'maxval' => [@maxval],
        'minval' => [@minval],
        'range' => [@mp],
        'label' => $molcount,
        'peers' => '0',
          );

push @allmolecules, %imolecule;
[download]

this part gets looped for as many times as there are molecules in a file. I reuse the '%imolecule' hash each loop, clearing it and refilling it with data. At the end of the loop I try to print out the hash array to see if it worked at all:

    for $i ( 1 .. $#allmolecules ) {
           print "$i is { ";
           for $field ( keys %{ $allmolecules[$i] } ) { #line 222
                    if (ref($allmolecules[$i]{$field}) eq "ARRAY")
                  {     print "$field=@{$allmolecules[$i]{$field}}"; }
                  else
                  {    print "$field=$allmolecules[$i]{$field}"; }
           }
            print "}\n";
    }
[download]

The above error indicates that the problem lies with this line of code:

for $field ( keys %{ $allmolecules[$i] } ) {
[download]

which would mean the allmolecules[i] isn't a hash.

Does anyone know what my mistake would be?

Also, since I reuse the imolecule hash each loop, I can't push it as a reference, but is there a better way to be doing it?

Appreciate any help :)

-tom

Update: Wow, thanks for the quick responses. I didn't realize that using {} would allocate new memory for my hash each round, allowing me to use the same hash name each loop. Dumper was very useful for me as well. I will definitely read that suggested material so my next problem won't be so easy for you guys to solve ;). Thanks again :)

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