Returning references

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

Hello all. I have a rather simple question, almost embarrased to ask it. There's a subroutine I need to use that returns a reference to an array such as:

$ref = $foo->get_body();
[download]

It's from Mail::Folder::Mbox and It's supposed to return the message body as an array. I'm almost embarrassed to be asking this.
--- "I slept with Faith, and found a corpse in my arms on
awaking; I drank and danced all night with Doubt, and found
her a virgin in the morning." Aleister Crowley, _The Book of Lies_

Comment on Returning references Download Code

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Re: Returning references by ChOas (Curate) on Jan 19, 2001 at 16:43 UTC
Try this, my friend: `my @Message=@{$ref};` [download] That'll dereference it... GreetZ!, ChOas print "profeth still\n" if /bird\|devil/;	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Returning references by davorg (Chancellor) on Jan 19, 2001 at 16:54 UTC
Or (cutting out the middle man... er... variable :) `@Message = @{ $foo->get_body() };` [download] -- <http://www.dave.org.uk> "Perl makes the fun jobs fun and the boring jobs bearable" - me	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Returning references by andye (Curate) on Jan 19, 2001 at 16:50 UTC
Hi there radagast... the answer above is right (if that was your question), but in more general terms, there's a very clear explanation of reference syntax in Effective Perl Programming, which I can recommend highly. Andy.	[reply]
Re: Returning references by mr.nick (Chaplain) on Jan 19, 2001 at 19:42 UTC
Or just start using it as `$ref` without moving it to another variable: `print join "\n",@$ref; # treat it as an array print $ref->[0]; # grab the first element for my $l (@$ref) { print $l; } # loop over it and do something` [download] You don't need to move it to another variable for it to be useful. You just need to know the syntax to dereference it on the fly.	[reply] [d/l] [select]