Complicated Nested Data Structures

[elusion]

ok, perl monks, I think I'm a little over my head this time. I'm trying to print what I think is an array of a hash of a reference to an array. I'm calling one of Net::Pop3's methods (get) which get's a message and stores it as a reference to an array. This is the code @{$msgs[$command]{message}} = $pop->get($command); now how do I explain that and how do I print that? Thanx for your help,

- p u n k k i d
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -Albert Einstein

[jlp]

I'm not sure I understand the question. Do you want to print the datastructure itself, or the data it contains? If you want to print a representation of the datastructure, use Data::Dumper:

use Data::Dumper;
my $structure = [ 'complex', { data => 'structure' } ];
print Dumper($structure);

[elusion]

Sorry, I tend to think a little different than most people and assume the wrong things. That line of code assigns a reference to an array which contains an email message. I want to be able to print that. I hope that makes more sense.

- p u n k k i d
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -Albert Einstein

[jlp]

Gotcha. No problem :) If all you want to do is print the contents of an array reference, just do:

print @{ $arrayref };

So, in your example, all you should have to do is:

print @{ $msgs[$command]->{message} }

assuming I understand the way your datastructure is setup. Hope that helps.

[btrott]

The get method returns an array *reference*, not an actual array. So your statement should be

    $msgs[$command]{message} = $pop->get($command);

That will store the array reference in

    $msgs[$command]{message}

To dump our your @msgs array--to get a sense of what it looks like, visually--you can use Data::Dumper, as jlp suggested:

    print Dumper \@msgs;

[elusion]

Thanx. That worked beautifully, once I realized that in order to print it I need to say print @{msgs[$command]{message}}; I appreciate your help.

- p u n k k i d
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -Albert Einstein