Re^2: Neverending Foreach Loop

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Re^3: Neverending Foreach Loop by GrandFather (Saint) on Jul 12, 2007 at 23:28 UTC
It's a function call. Looks like it's for a parser. I'd guess each time it's called it returns a result from parsing the next "chunk". You need to read to docs for the module. DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel	[reply]
Re^3: Neverending Foreach Loop by dsheroh (Monsignor) on Jul 13, 2007 at 06:25 UTC
Even if the contents of the hash are the same each time you call the sub, it's still a different hash. To take the most trivial example: `sub get_hashref { my %hash; return \%hash; }` [download] it creates a new `my %hash` each time it's called, since the old one went out of scope and no longer exists¹. If you want to prove this to yourself, create a trivial sub like that and call it twice, storing both hashrefs. Add some data to one hashref, then look in the other - it will still be empty. (There are ways to have it return references to the same hash every time it's called, such as `my %hash; sub get_hashref2 { return \%hash; }` [download] but defectdata() apparently doesn't do this.) ¹ Not entirely true, in that the previous hash still exists and can be accessed by the previously-returned hashref, but it has become anonymous and is no longer `my %hash`. Read up on "closures" for more about how this works (and how it can be used to do some pretty powerful stuff).	[reply] [d/l] [select]