http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=549207


in reply to array references in DBI

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);
}

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Re^2: array references in DBI
by BrianC (Acolyte) on May 13, 2006 at 16:14 UTC
    Thank you for pointing this out. What if @an was lexical but declared before the while loop? I would have the same problem, no?
[reply]
      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'
          ]
        ];

      [download]

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

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