Multidimensional Array Trouble

Kelly22 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

My problem is that \@channelsSegments and \@channelsTime end up with the same data, which is the data from both the m/^($Channel)Time=/ and m/^$_=/) conditions. The conditions work correctly and I know the problem is at the push but I dont understand whats going wrong.

  foreach (@channels){
                 $Channel=$_;
                 if ($Line =~ m/^$_=/){
                      my @channelsSegmentsSplit=split(/=/,$Line);
                       foreach (split(/\,/,$channelsSegmentsSplit[1]))
+{
                           print "Segment\n";
                           print "$_ \n";
                         push @{$channelsSegments[$Count]}, $_;
                     }
                 }
                 elsif($Line =~ m/^($Channel)Time=/){
                     my @channelsSegmentsTimeSplit=split(/=/,$Line);
                     foreach (split(/\,/,$channelsSegmentsTimeSplit[1]
+)){
                         print "Time\n";
                           print "$_ \n";
                         push @{$channelsTime[$Count]}, $_;
                     }
                 }
                 $Count++;
             }
         }
     
   return (\@channels, \@channelsSegments, \@channelsTime, $readInterv
+al);
[download]

Comment on Multidimensional Array Trouble Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Multidimensional Array Trouble by SuicideJunkie (Vicar) on Jun 04, 2012 at 16:52 UTC
The first thing to do with complex data structures is to print them out with `use Data::Dumper; print Dumper $mysteriousStructure;` The symptom of getting the same thing on two branches is often a problem of storing multiple references to the same old array or hash. `my @array; my %hash; push @array, 'foo'; $hash{ref1} = \@array; push @array, 'bar'; $hash{ref2} = \@array;` [download] At that point, both entries in the hash point to the same array, and that array contains both 'foo' and 'bar'.	[reply] [d/l] [select]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.

Re: Multidimensional Array Trouble
by SuicideJunkie (Vicar) on Jun 04, 2012 at 16:52 UTC

The first thing to do with complex data structures is to print them out with use Data::Dumper; print Dumper $mysteriousStructure;

The symptom of getting the same thing on two branches is often a problem of storing multiple references to the same old array or hash.

my @array;
my %hash;

push @array, 'foo';
$hash{ref1} = \@array;
push @array, 'bar';
$hash{ref2} = \@array;
[download]

At that point, both entries in the hash point to the same array, and that array contains both 'foo' and 'bar'.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]