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

Can anyone tell me why the following code won't return anything for $gooddata if {content} equals an integer?: 
foreach $record (@{$data->{present_response}->{record}}){
$gooddata=$record->{datafield}->{210}->{subfield}->{a}->{content};
    print $gooddata;
}

[download]
eg: if 'content' => 'This is a string of characters'
then I'll get back "This is a string of characters",

but if 'content' => '123412341234'
then I'll get back nothing - like $gooddata doesn't even have a value.

Thanks! Perl newb, out.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Deconstructed array won't return scalar value if integer?
by toolic (Bishop) on Nov 29, 2007 at 18:08 UTC
    Are you sure your '123412341234' string is really where you expect it to be in your data structure? You could use the following to make sure: 
    use Data::Dumper;
...
print Dumper($record);

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      Yeah, Dumper returns nothing either. Real world code example: 
      '016' => {
        'ind1' => ' ',
        'ind2' => ' ',
        'subfield' => {
            'a' => {
               'content' => '2009600369'
             }
        }
      },
'546' => {
        'ind1' => ' ',
        'ind2' => ' ',
        'subfield' => {
            'a' => {
                 'content' => 'English'
            }
        }
      },

      [download]
      Like I said before - 546's content will return English, while 016 will return an uninitialized value
[reply]
[d/l]
        I wonder if the leading 0 in 016 is causing problems. Perhaps when referencing, you could try to force this number to be a string as follows: 
        $gooddata=$record->{datafield}->{'016'}->{subfield}->{a}->{content};

        [download]
        Just a thought.
[reply]
[d/l]

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