How to print the deep content of the array?

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

How can I accept an array as input and print out the deep content of the array?

my @ary = (1, ["a", "b", [ ], [3, [0],5]);

Would like to print out:

(1, [a, b, [ ], [3, [0], 5])

(formatting fixed by editors)

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

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Re: How to print the deep content of the array? by chromatic (Archbishop) on Sep 21, 2000 at 07:08 UTC
If it doesn't need to be in that exact format, the built in Data::Dumper module is quite nice: `use Data::Dumper; print Dumper(\@ary);` [download] Otherwise, you'll have to loop through the elements of the array, checking them with ref and recursing when necessary. It's doable, but not terribly fun.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How to print the deep content of the array? by princepawn (Parson) on Sep 21, 2000 at 16:51 UTC
If using Data::Dumper as above, you will not have a descriptive name for the array. While this is not a problem when printing one variable, it can be when printing more. So, instead: `@a=(1,2,3); $b= [ 4,5,6 ]; use Data::Dumper; Data::Dumper->Dump([\@a,$b],['a','b'])` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How to print the deep content of the array? by ton (Friar) on Apr 05, 2001 at 03:35 UTC
Of course it's more fun to do it yourself. Try this: `my @ary = (1, ['a', 'b', [], [3, [0], 5]]); print_deep_array(\@ary); print "\n"; sub print_deep_array($) { my $arrRef = shift; for (my $i = 0; $i < scalar(@$arrRef); ++$i) { if (ref($arrRef->[$i]) eq 'ARRAY') { print ', ' if ($i); print '['; print_deep_array($arrRef->[$i]); print ']'; } else { print ', ' if ($i); print $arrRef->[$i]; } } print ' ' if (!scalar(@$arrRef)); }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]