note davido <p>See [mod://autovivification], a pragma (available from CPAN) that can lexically disable [doc://perlfaq4|autovivification] (the behavior). Here's an example from perlfaq4:</p> <c> { no autovivification; my %hash; if( exists $hash{key1}{key2}{key3} ) { ...; } } </c> <p>The faq also suggests a few other techniques.</p> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-281137"> <br /><p>Dave</p> </div></div> 1012812 1012812