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

I need to find out whether or not the value inside of a particular hash is a scalar or an anonymous array. Can somebdy tell me a quick way to find this, since both have to be processed differently...?

Thanks

Here's a sample of the printed hash... 

bob => 150lbs
times_he_ate_cheeseburgers => ARRAY(0xd2a2c)
favorite_night_spots => ARRAY(0xc7100)
ex_girlfriends => ARRAY(0xc7148)
favorite_pokemon => ANY
best_friend => DOG

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Finding variable context
by Hot Pastrami (Monk) on Sep 29, 2000 at 20:58 UTC
    Use the ref() funtion... 
    
if (ref($array[$i]) eq "ARRAY") {
  print "It's an array!";
}
else {
  print "Not an array!";
}

    [download]

    Update: Oops, you said in a hash, my bad... here's a better example: 
    
if (ref $hash{$key} eq "ARRAY") {
  print "It's an array ref!";
}
else {
  print "Not an array ref!";
}

    [download]

    Alan "Hot Pastrami" Bellows
    -Sitting calmly with scissors-
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: Finding variable context
by tye (Sage) on Sep 29, 2000 at 21:57 UTC

    Please instead use: 

        if(  UNIVERSAL::isa( $hash{$key}, "ARRAY" )  ) {
        dosomething(  @{ $hash{$key} }  );
    } else {
        dosomething(  $hash{$key}  );
    }

    [download]

    This makes your code work for non-ordinary array references.

            - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Finding variable context
by swiftone (Curate) on Sep 29, 2000 at 21:05 UTC
[reply]

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