Re: How should I understand scalar(%hash) results?

[BrowserUk]

Good guess :) From perldata:

..., but evaluating %HASH in scalar context reveals "1/16", which means only one out of sixteen buckets has been touched, ...

[TVSET]

Oh, thanks. I guess I missed this bit somehow...

[thospel]

In normal programs the only interesting thing about this is that it's guaranteed to return false for an empty hash and something that's true otherwise. So you can check if a hash is empty or not by simply using the hash name in boolean context (which is a scalar context):

if (%hash) {
   ..do something for a filled %hash...
} else {
   ...do something for an empty %hash...
}