That little ||= keeps a value in the hash if it is there or assigns a new key/value pair if it is not defined yet.

Oops. You have to be a little more careful than that. Your code will perform the assignment even in the case that a previous false value exists. For example: 

$h{key} = 0; 
$h{key} ||= "foo"; 
print $h{key};

[download]

If you really want to check for definedness, you should use defined(). Often, though, there are situations where undef is a valid value too and in those cases you should use exists() to check whether the hash key exists yet. Here is one way to do that succinctly: 

$h{$key} = "value" unless exists $h{$key};

[download]

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

In reply to Re: Re: adding to a hash by sauoq
in thread adding to a hash by powerhouse

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.