http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=138529

I have no clue why anyone might need this. I created it while answering a question about multidimensional arrays. It is my first successful recursive sub.

sub depth { my $arr = shift; return 1 unless ref $$arr[0] eq 'ARRAY'; return depth( $$arr[0] ) + 1; }

Call it with a reference to your array of arrays structure

print depth( \@array );

Update: Changed the fourth line to indicate the correct sub.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Depth of AoAs
by rob_au (Abbot) on Jan 14, 2002 at 10:33 UTC
    There are two small problems with this code - The first is that you have called the subroutine depth yet reference it within the subroutine as dimensions. Has anyone ever told you that recursion is evil? :-)

    Also, if the subroutine is called with something other than an array reference, it still returns a count of 1.

     

    Update

    This code addresses the issues above and returns the correct reference depth of the array.

    sub depth { return 0 unless ref $_[0] eq 'ARRAY'; return depth( ${$_[0]}[0] ) + 1; }

    Or alternatively, without recursion ...

    sub depth { my $array = shift; my $count = 0; while (ref $array eq 'ARRAY') { $array = ${$array}[0]; ++$count; } return $count; }

     

    Update

    Okay ... So I was curious and went ahead and benchmarked these subroutines and was pleasantly surprised with the result.

    Benchmark: timing 100000 iterations of loop, recursion... loop: 6 wallclock secs ( 5.30 usr + 0.00 sys = 5.30 CPU) @ 18 +867.92/s (n=100000) recursion: 6 wallclock secs ( 5.87 usr + 0.00 sys = 5.87 CPU) @ 17 +035.78/s (n=100000)

     

Re: Depth of AoAs
by merlyn (Sage) on Jan 15, 2002 at 02:50 UTC