Converting a String to Array Reference

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

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Re: Converting a String to Array Reference by moritz (Cardinal) on Jun 29, 2009 at 08:43 UTC
eval can help you, but is a security risk if it's not actually just an array reference. There's also a CPAN module which parses such strings safely, but I can't remember the name right now. Search the CPAN might help you.	[reply]
Re: Converting a String to Array Reference by mscharrer (Hermit) on Jun 29, 2009 at 09:24 UTC
In this specific case you could do it like this: `my $var ='[1,2]'; my @array = map { 0+$_ } split ',', substr($var,1,-1);` [download] If the array holds non-numbers (or you don't care that the numbers are saved as strings) you can remove the '`map { ... }`' part. However the CPAN module mentioned in earlier post would do this more safely and support more features.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Converting a String to Array Reference by Anonymous Monk on Jun 29, 2009 at 08:48 UTC
Undumper, Data::Denter, http://search.cpan.org/~dconway/Parse-RecDescent-1.96.0/demo/demo_undumper.pl	[reply]
Re: Converting a String to Array Reference by Marshall (Canon) on Jun 29, 2009 at 17:49 UTC
This looks a bit strange for an internal variable. I would guess that something like this would come from the outside via a file, etc. Maybe a config file? If that's true, then there are better config modules and syntax for this. But anyway, if this is what you have, then I would parse it in the easiest way possible - this is one line. `#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my $var ='[1,2]'; my @var = split (/[\[\],]/, $var); print "@var";` [download] This says to split the line based upon the character set of `[ ] ,`. The required \ escape characters confuse this a bit, but that's all there is to it. to use array ref to this just push \@var on some list...	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Converting a String to Array Reference by doug (Pilgrim) on Jun 29, 2009 at 17:01 UTC
Just out of curiosity, what itch are you trying to scratch? Is there a way we could avoid doing this? With some more facts, we might be able to side step this issue completely. - doug	[reply]