Mystery character in hash key name

[fiddler42]

Hi,

I am building a couple of different hash tables like so (notice the 4 separate variables in the key name, starting with $F):-

$TotalMatchesHash{$F,$BBEL,$AR,$VL} = $MatchCount;

I am able to do everything I need to do with the hash tables, like find matching keys, process results, etc. But I running into a problem as I wrap up my routine: when I print the key names, I see this:-

original key is 5<fs>19<fs>56<fs>46

...and I cannot work around the <fs> characters, and it is important that I retrieve those 4 original variable values (all integers).

Any suggestions? The code below reveals what I am trying to do. Notice the split line that references <fs>, which does NOT work...

Thanks,

-Fiddler42

foreach (keys %NewRFactorAverageHash) {
    $RScale = $NewRFactorAverageHash{$_};
    print ("original key is $_\n");
    @LaL = split (/<fs>/, $_);
    print ("new key is $LaL\n");
    $F = $LaL[0];
    $BBEL = $LaL[1];
    $AR = $LaL[2];
    $VL = $LaL[3];
}

[Roy Johnson]

See the $; variable. You'll want to split on that instead of <fs>. Also, printing $LaL isn't going to be helpful, since you're splitting to @LaL.

[fiddler42]

Hi,

That was it! This works:-

foreach (keys %NewRFactorAverageHash) {
    $RScale = $NewRFactorAverageHash{$_};
    $F = 0;
    $BBEL = 0;
    $AR = 0;
    $VL = 0;
    print ("original key is $_\n");
    @LaL = split (/$;/, $_);
    print ("new key is @LaL\n");
}

BTW, notice I replaced "new key is $LaL" with "new key is @LaL"...the original post was a typo.

Thanks again!

-Fiddler42

[bv]

Interestingly enough, the $; variable on my system (Debian GNU/Linux, Perl 5.10.0) is 0x1c, the ASCII FS (file separator) character. Who'da thunkit?

[SuicideJunkie]

Did you forget to use strict; use warnings;?
You should have been notified that $LaL is not declared or defined.

You are setting @LaL with the split, but then printing the completely unrelated variable $LaL.

[moritz]

$TotalMatchesHash{$F,$BBEL,$AR,$VL} = $MatchCount;

This just concatenates the four variables and uses the result as a hash key. If they are all integers, you can't retrieve the previous values from that hash key unless you happen to know their lengths.

Update: That was actually wrong; see the other replies.

I strongly recommend to dump your hash like this:

use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Useqq = 1;
...
print Dumper \%NewRFactorAverageHash;

This will escape non-printable characters in a meaningful way.