Re: array references in DBI

[ioannis]

Note. The code that worked came close to not working either. Each iteration tried to save the same reference!
push @OrderedQuestions, \@an ;
It only worked because @an was declared lexical and not global:

This almost identical code will not work
with the keyword my is missing:

while ( @an = $sth->fetchrow_array) {
     push (@OrderedQuestions, \@an);
}

[BrianC]

Thank you for pointing this out. What if @an was lexical but declared before the while loop? I would have the same problem, no?

[bart]

Yes, you would be pushing the same array ref every time, and the contents would change afterwards.

Test code (no DBI involved):

my @rows;
my @row = qw(one two);
push @rows, \@row;
@row = qw(three four);

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper \@rows;

__END__
$VAR1 = [
          [
            'three',
            'four'
          ]
        ];

As you can see, the contents of the collating array changes after you put it in there.