http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=1056696

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

Hi Im fairly new to perl and I am pretty stumped on a problem that I am having with hashes and trying to access a value of a key when I assign the value to be an array filled with stuff. I try to print the key and the value it returns is some crazy random numbers an integers like 3hx0jeh5. Please help

print "Enter the value"; my $item_to_push = <STDIN>; my @array = ('derp'); push(@array, $item_to_push); print @array; my %names; $names{'bill'} = [@array]; print $names{'bill'};

As you see I create a hash called %names, I assign a key in it called 'bill' to @array ( so that it is its value ), and I then try to print the value of the key 'bill' but this is what comes up. ARRAY(0x81c1f0)

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Re: Using Arrays with Hash key values
by toolic (Bishop) on Oct 03, 2013 at 00:58 UTC
    Now that you have updated your post and added your code, you need to deference the array:
    use warnings; use strict; my $item_to_push = 'foo'; my @array = ('derp'); push(@array, $item_to_push); my %names; $names{'bill'} = [@array]; print "@{ $names{'bill'} }"; print "\n"; __END__ derp foo

    See also tip #4 from the Basic debugging checklist: Data::Dumper

      Ah ok I see thanks for the help its much appreciated!

Re: Using Arrays with Hash key values
by toolic (Bishop) on Oct 03, 2013 at 00:38 UTC

      Thanks for the help