%dictionary is a hash. You are passing it as a hash reference argument to
readWords() and
sortDictionary(), via
\%dictionary. So far so good.
Now, inside the functions
readWords() and
sortDictionary(), you need to consume the argument you passed in. But your code currently does not do that. (Instead, it is consuming the closed-over lexical
my %dictionary - if you don't understand this last sentence, ignore it for now).
Let change your functions to consume the passed in hashref. To avoid confusion, I renamed the variable inside the functions to be
$dict instead. Here's the same code with modifications indicated:
my %dictionary;
readWords(\%dictionary);
sortDictionary(\%dictionary);
sub readWords {
my ($dict) = @_; # <<--- grab hashref argument
$numWords = 0;
open FILE, $ARGV[0] or die $!;
while (my $lines = <FILE>) {
$numWords++;
chomp $lines;
my ($words, $definitions) = split('/', $lines);
$words = lc($words);
$dict->{$words} = $definitions; # <<--- renamed $dictionary to $
+dict
}
foreach $key (%{ $dict }) { # <<--- use $dict exclusively, but as
+the hash it's pointing to
print $dict->{$words}; # <<--- renamed $dictionary to $dict
print $result . "\n";
}
close FILE;
}
sub sortDictionary {
my ($dict) = @_; # <<--- grab hashref argument
foreach my $key (sort keys %{ $dict }) { # <<--- use $dict exclusi
+vely, but as the hash it's pointing to
$key =~ /^(.)/;
my $line = $key . '/' . $dict->{$key} . "\n"; # <<--- renamed $d
+ictionary to $dict
print $line;
}
}