selecting values from hash via list

[leocharre]

I have a hash or hashref. Let's make it easy, a hash.

my %h = (
   name => 'dumdum',
   age => 14,
   zone => 'a4',
   pocket => 'empty',
);

I'm going to print some of this data with printf..

printf "%-20s %5d %s\n", $h{name}, $h{age}, $h{zone};

What's another way to specify those three values? Specifically, as you would as list args.. I know this has to be out there.

I like this trick to init hash keys (learned it here)..

my %a;
my @a = qw/name age zone pocket/;
@a{@a}=();
# looks weird, eh? ;-)
# now 'exists $a{name}' is true!

Maybe there's some way to ...err... uhhhm ...

printf "%-20s %5d %s\n", @h{qw/name age zone/};

???

(sorry about the title, dunno how else the heck to word this)

update

Silly me, that second example, that was the solution, thanks toolic

[toolic]

I'm confused. Your 2 printf statements print the same thing for me. Isn't that what you want -- to use a hash slice to save typing? See Slices.

printf "%-20s %5d %s\n", $h{name}, $h{age}, $h{zone};
printf "%-20s %5d %s\n", @h{qw/name age zone/};

[leocharre]

Oh.. dear... it works.. I thought I was making up code!

I thought this was nonsense! : printf "%-20s %5d %s\n", @h{qw/name age zone/};