You've probably seen examples of assigning to a hash that look like this: 
my %favs = (
    syfy     =>  'Babylon 5',
    fantasy  =>  'Lord of the Rings',
    animated =>  'Monsters vs. Aliens',
    anime    =>  'El Cazador de la Bruja',
    );

[download]
That is exactly the same as: 
my %favs = (
    'syfy',     'Babylon 5',
    'fantasy',  'Lord of the Rings',
    'animated', 'Monsters vs. Aliens',
    'anime',    'El Cazador de la Bruja',
    );

[download]
Which is the same as: 
my %favs = ( 'syfy',  'Babylon 5', 'fantasy', 'Lord of the Rings','ani
+mated', 'Monsters vs. Aliens', 'anime', 'El Cazador de la Bruja', );

[download]
So => is the same as a comma!! The only difference is that with => the operand on the left can be a bareword (i.e. does not normally have to be quoted). So that hash assignment is really just a list. And since perl is looking for key/value pairs the number of elements in the list has the be an even number.

Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks

In reply to Re: Hash assignment "odd" ness by Argel
in thread Hash assignment "odd" ness by phigment

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