Either way, check to make sure you haven't defined a function called "count" or imported a package which exports count as a function or variable.

strict wasn't used in this particular script, so I'll add that and see what happens. The other items you mentioned were carefully checked. I should mention that I'm working on a project converting older Perl code (which was converted from ColdFusion...), created by people who really don't know Perl all that well. I can barely get them to understand what a reference is, so getting them to use strict with any consistency is like pulling teeth.

Try dumping the variables with Data::Dump::Streamer before returning.

Clint

Yes, it's a normal array. We create it as a "placeholder" to build the longer string. The array ref contains array refs of strings from a database column, that look like this:

12345678-abcd-4321-wxyz-wufht83nwi03

They're all unique. We need to fetch all the strings, then quote them and string them together. That resulting long string is passed to a subsequent SQL query as an IN ('...') conditional.

Here's what I'm doing, in more detail:

my ($aref, $acount, @temparray, $tcount);

$aref = GetArrayRef($dbh,$sqlquery);

$acount = @$aref; # results in n

foreach (@$aref) { push(@temparray,qq('$_[0]') ); }

$tcount = @temparray; # should also equal n, and does.

After we create @temparray, we join all the elements to a string. We have to quote the strings or else Oracle will not parse the query correctly.

The problem is that when we return $tcount to the caller, it hangs. $acount passes fine.

I've double checked everything, including any called modules, and everything seems fine.

Odd.

use strict;
use warnings;

my ($x, $y, $z) = returner();


sub returner {
 my ($a, $b, $c);

 # define $a $b and $c


 # now for something I would throw in just for kicks
 # just before you return..

 defined $a or die("a not defined");
 defined $b or die("b not defined");
 defined $c or die("c not defined");

 return ( $a, $b, $c);

}
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use strict;
use warnings;

my ($x, $y, $z) = @{returner()};


sub returner {
 my ($a, $b, $c) =( undef, undef, undef);

 # define $a $b and $c


 # now we return one value only

 return [$a, $b, $c];

}
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Thanks for th advice. I'll try that.

As I said in the original question, this isn't a show-stopper for us. But my curiosity is piqued over why it wouldn't work.

I'll try and pass along the results.

Thanks to all for your input!

The third one is the problem: it's a very simple count of elements in the aforementioned temporary array. Like this: $count = @array;

That doesn't assign a reference to an array, it puts the length of the array @array into $count What you want (and are probably doing in your real code) is

Other than that, I'd start by inspecting the value that actually ends up in $count to see what it contains. You can use the inbuilt ref function or Scalar::Util->reftype(). Also consider posting the real code you're using (since you've obviously made at least one mistake in transcribing/summarising it), it sould be particularly pertinent to know which "external module" returns the array reference.

You misunderstood. I'm not trying to assign the array to a ref. I already have a ref. The array is just a place holder to take elements from the original array ref so we can string them together. (See my more extended code in the first response above).

What I'm doing with $count = @array is just get a count of the elements in @array after we stick them in there. That's what I want.

And I've examined $count and it equals n, the number of elements, which is exactly what I want. A number.

see my response above...

Do you have access to the error_log?

I'm guessing that if you don't use strict, maybe you also don't use my so you have global variables all over the place. Is $count a lexical variable, or are you overwriting a global one? For example, if $count determines when a while loop stops, but you kept resetting it to a non-zero value.....