Страницы справочника OS X

Эта страница руководства для  версии 10.9 Mac OS X

Читать страницы руководства

PERLDATA(1)                           Perl Programmers Reference Guide                           PERLDATA(1)



NAME
       perldata - Perl data types

DESCRIPTION
   Variable names
       Perl has three built-in data types: scalars, arrays of scalars, and associative arrays of scalars,
       known as "hashes".  A scalar is a single string (of any size, limited only by the available memory),
       number, or a reference to something (which will be discussed in perlref).  Normal arrays are ordered
       lists of scalars indexed by number, starting with 0.  Hashes are unordered collections of scalar
       values indexed by their associated string key.

       Values are usually referred to by name, or through a named reference.  The first character of the
       name tells you to what sort of data structure it refers.  The rest of the name tells you the
       particular value to which it refers.  Usually this name is a single identifier, that is, a string
       beginning with a letter or underscore, and containing letters, underscores, and digits.  In some
       cases, it may be a chain of identifiers, separated by "::" (or by the slightly archaic "'"); all but
       the last are interpreted as names of packages, to locate the namespace in which to look up the final
       identifier (see "Packages" in perlmod for details).  It's possible to substitute for a simple
       identifier, an expression that produces a reference to the value at runtime.   This is described in
       more detail below and in perlref.

       Perl also has its own built-in variables whose names don't follow these rules.  They have strange
       names so they don't accidentally collide with one of your normal variables.  Strings that match
       parenthesized parts of a regular expression are saved under names containing only digits after the
       "$" (see perlop and perlre).  In addition, several special variables that provide windows into the
       inner working of Perl have names containing punctuation characters and control characters.  These are
       documented in perlvar.

       Scalar values are always named with '$', even when referring to a scalar that is part of an array or
       a hash.  The '$' symbol works semantically like the English word "the" in that it indicates a single
       value is expected.

           $days               # the simple scalar value "days"
           $days[28]           # the 29th element of array @days
           $days{'Feb'}        # the 'Feb' value from hash %days
           $#days              # the last index of array @days

       Entire arrays (and slices of arrays and hashes) are denoted by '@', which works much as the word
       "these" or "those" does in English, in that it indicates multiple values are expected.

           @days               # ($days[0], $days[1],... $days[n])
           @days[3,4,5]        # same as ($days[3],$days[4],$days[5])
           @days{'a','c'}      # same as ($days{'a'},$days{'c'})

       Entire hashes are denoted by '%':

           %days               # (key1, val1, key2, val2 ...)

       In addition, subroutines are named with an initial '&', though this is optional when unambiguous,
       just as the word "do" is often redundant in English.  Symbol table entries can be named with an
       initial '*', but you don't really care about that yet (if ever :-).

       Every variable type has its own namespace, as do several non-variable identifiers.  This means that
       you can, without fear of conflict, use the same name for a scalar variable, an array, or a hash--or,
       for that matter, for a filehandle, a directory handle, a subroutine name, a format name, or a label.
       This means that $foo and @foo are two different variables.  It also means that $foo[1] is a part of
       @foo, not a part of $foo.  This may seem a bit weird, but that's okay, because it is weird.

       Because variable references always start with '$', '@', or '%', the "reserved" words aren't in fact
       reserved with respect to variable names.  They are reserved with respect to labels and filehandles,
       however, which don't have an initial special character.  You can't have a filehandle named "log", for
       instance.  Hint: you could say "open(LOG,'logfile')" rather than "open(log,'logfile')".  Using
       uppercase filehandles also improves readability and protects you from conflict with future reserved
       words.  Case is significant--"FOO", "Foo", and "foo" are all different names.  Names that start with
       a letter or underscore may also contain digits and underscores.

       It is possible to replace such an alphanumeric name with an expression that returns a reference to
       the appropriate type.  For a description of this, see perlref.

       Names that start with a digit may contain only more digits.  Names that do not start with a letter,
       underscore, digit or a caret (i.e.  a control character) are limited to one character, e.g.,  $% or
       $$.  (Most of these one character names have a predefined significance to Perl.  For instance, $$ is
       the current process id.)

   Context
       The interpretation of operations and values in Perl sometimes depends on the requirements of the
       context around the operation or value.  There are two major contexts: list and scalar.  Certain
       operations return list values in contexts wanting a list, and scalar values otherwise.  If this is
       true of an operation it will be mentioned in the documentation for that operation.  In other words,
       Perl overloads certain operations based on whether the expected return value is singular or plural.
       Some words in English work this way, like "fish" and "sheep".

       In a reciprocal fashion, an operation provides either a scalar or a list context to each of its
       arguments.  For example, if you say

           int( <STDIN> )

       the integer operation provides scalar context for the <> operator, which responds by reading one line
       from STDIN and passing it back to the integer operation, which will then find the integer value of
       that line and return that.  If, on the other hand, you say

           sort( <STDIN> )

       then the sort operation provides list context for <>, which will proceed to read every line available
       up to the end of file, and pass that list of lines back to the sort routine, which will then sort
       those lines and return them as a list to whatever the context of the sort was.

       Assignment is a little bit special in that it uses its left argument to determine the context for the
       right argument.  Assignment to a scalar evaluates the right-hand side in scalar context, while
       assignment to an array or hash evaluates the righthand side in list context.  Assignment to a list
       (or slice, which is just a list anyway) also evaluates the right-hand side in list context.

       When you use the "use warnings" pragma or Perl's -w command-line option, you may see warnings about
       useless uses of constants or functions in "void context".  Void context just means the value has been
       discarded, such as a statement containing only ""fred";" or "getpwuid(0);".  It still counts as
       scalar context for functions that care whether or not they're being called in list context.

       User-defined subroutines may choose to care whether they are being called in a void, scalar, or list
       context.  Most subroutines do not need to bother, though.  That's because both scalars and lists are
       automatically interpolated into lists.  See "wantarray" in perlfunc for how you would dynamically
       discern your function's calling context.

   Scalar values
       All data in Perl is a scalar, an array of scalars, or a hash of scalars.  A scalar may contain one
       single value in any of three different flavors: a number, a string, or a reference.  In general,
       conversion from one form to another is transparent.  Although a scalar may not directly hold multiple
       values, it may contain a reference to an array or hash which in turn contains multiple values.

       Scalars aren't necessarily one thing or another.  There's no place to declare a scalar variable to be
       of type "string", type "number", type "reference", or anything else.  Because of the automatic
       conversion of scalars, operations that return scalars don't need to care (and in fact, cannot care)
       whether their caller is looking for a string, a number, or a reference.  Perl is a contextually
       polymorphic language whose scalars can be strings, numbers, or references (which includes objects).
       Although strings and numbers are considered pretty much the same thing for nearly all purposes,
       references are strongly-typed, uncastable pointers with builtin reference-counting and destructor
       invocation.

       A scalar value is interpreted as FALSE in the Boolean sense if it is undefined, the null string or
       the number 0 (or its string equivalent, "0"), and TRUE if it is anything else.  The Boolean context
       is just a special kind of scalar context where no conversion to a string or a number is ever
       performed.

       There are actually two varieties of null strings (sometimes referred to as "empty" strings), a
       defined one and an undefined one.  The defined version is just a string of length zero, such as "".
       The undefined version is the value that indicates that there is no real value for something, such as
       when there was an error, or at end of file, or when you refer to an uninitialized variable or element
       of an array or hash.  Although in early versions of Perl, an undefined scalar could become defined
       when first used in a place expecting a defined value, this no longer happens except for rare cases of
       autovivification as explained in perlref.  You can use the defined() operator to determine whether a
       scalar value is defined (this has no meaning on arrays or hashes), and the undef() operator to
       produce an undefined value.

       To find out whether a given string is a valid non-zero number, it's sometimes enough to test it
       against both numeric 0 and also lexical "0" (although this will cause noises if warnings are on).
       That's because strings that aren't numbers count as 0, just as they do in awk:

           if ($str == 0 && $str ne "0")  {
               warn "That doesn't look like a number";
           }

       That method may be best because otherwise you won't treat IEEE notations like "NaN" or "Infinity"
       properly.  At other times, you might prefer to determine whether string data can be used numerically
       by calling the POSIX::strtod() function or by inspecting your string with a regular expression (as
       documented in perlre).

           warn "has nondigits"        if     /\D/;
           warn "not a natural number" unless /^\d+$/;             # rejects -3
           warn "not an integer"       unless /^-?\d+$/;           # rejects +3
           warn "not an integer"       unless /^[+-]?\d+$/;
           warn "not a decimal number" unless /^-?\d+\.?\d*$/;     # rejects .2
           warn "not a decimal number" unless /^-?(?:\d+(?:\.\d*)?|\.\d+)$/;
           warn "not a C float"
               unless /^([+-]?)(?=\d|\.\d)\d*(\.\d*)?([Ee]([+-]?\d+))?$/;

       The length of an array is a scalar value.  You may find the length of array @days by evaluating
       $#days, as in csh.  However, this isn't the length of the array; it's the subscript of the last
       element, which is a different value since there is ordinarily a 0th element.  Assigning to $#days
       actually changes the length of the array.  Shortening an array this way destroys intervening values.
       Lengthening an array that was previously shortened does not recover values that were in those
       elements.  (It used to do so in Perl 4, but we had to break this to make sure destructors were called
       when expected.)

       You can also gain some minuscule measure of efficiency by pre-extending an array that is going to get
       big.  You can also extend an array by assigning to an element that is off the end of the array.  You
       can truncate an array down to nothing by assigning the null list () to it.  The following are
       equivalent:

           @whatever = ();
           $#whatever = -1;

       If you evaluate an array in scalar context, it returns the length of the array.  (Note that this is
       not true of lists, which return the last value, like the C comma operator, nor of built-in functions,
       which return whatever they feel like returning.)  The following is always true:

           scalar(@whatever) == $#whatever + 1;

       Some programmers choose to use an explicit conversion so as to leave nothing to doubt:

           $element_count = scalar(@whatever);

       If you evaluate a hash in scalar context, it returns false if the hash is empty.  If there are any
       key/value pairs, it returns true; more precisely, the value returned is a string consisting of the
       number of used buckets and the number of allocated buckets, separated by a slash.  This is pretty
       much useful only to find out whether Perl's internal hashing algorithm is performing poorly on your
       data set.  For example, you stick 10,000 things in a hash, but evaluating %HASH in scalar context
       reveals "1/16", which means only one out of sixteen buckets has been touched, and presumably contains
       all 10,000 of your items.  This isn't supposed to happen.  If a tied hash is evaluated in scalar
       context, the "SCALAR" method is called (with a fallback to "FIRSTKEY").

       You can preallocate space for a hash by assigning to the keys() function.  This rounds up the
       allocated buckets to the next power of two:

           keys(%users) = 1000;                # allocate 1024 buckets

   Scalar value constructors
       Numeric literals are specified in any of the following floating point or integer formats:

           12345
           12345.67
           .23E-10             # a very small number
           3.14_15_92          # a very important number
           4_294_967_296       # underscore for legibility
           0xff                # hex
           0xdead_beef         # more hex
           0377                # octal (only numbers, begins with 0)
           0b011011            # binary

       You are allowed to use underscores (underbars) in numeric literals between digits for legibility (but
       not multiple underscores in a row: "23__500" is not legal; "23_500" is).  You could, for example,
       group binary digits by threes (as for a Unix-style mode argument such as 0b110_100_100) or by fours
       (to represent nibbles, as in 0b1010_0110) or in other groups.

       String literals are usually delimited by either single or double quotes.  They work much like quotes
       in the standard Unix shells: double-quoted string literals are subject to backslash and variable
       substitution; single-quoted strings are not (except for "\'" and "\\").  The usual C-style backslash
       rules apply for making characters such as newline, tab, etc., as well as some more exotic forms.  See
       "Quote and Quote-like Operators" in perlop for a list.

       Hexadecimal, octal, or binary, representations in string literals (e.g. '0xff') are not automatically
       converted to their integer representation.  The hex() and oct() functions make these conversions for
       you.  See "hex" in perlfunc and "oct" in perlfunc for more details.

       You can also embed newlines directly in your strings, i.e., they can end on a different line than
       they begin.  This is nice, but if you forget your trailing quote, the error will not be reported
       until Perl finds another line containing the quote character, which may be much further on in the
       script.  Variable substitution inside strings is limited to scalar variables, arrays, and array or
       hash slices.  (In other words, names beginning with $ or @, followed by an optional bracketed
       expression as a subscript.)  The following code segment prints out "The price is $100."

           $Price = '$100';    # not interpolated
           print "The price is $Price.\n";     # interpolated

       There is no double interpolation in Perl, so the $100 is left as is.

       By default floating point numbers substituted inside strings use the dot (".")  as the decimal
       separator.  If "use locale" is in effect, and POSIX::setlocale() has been called, the character used
       for the decimal separator is affected by the LC_NUMERIC locale.  See perllocale and POSIX.

       As in some shells, you can enclose the variable name in braces to disambiguate it from following
       alphanumerics (and underscores).  You must also do this when interpolating a variable into a string
       to separate the variable name from a following double-colon or an apostrophe, since these would be
       otherwise treated as a package separator:

           $who = "Larry";
           print PASSWD "${who}::0:0:Superuser:/:/bin/perl\n";
           print "We use ${who}speak when ${who}'s here.\n";

       Without the braces, Perl would have looked for a $whospeak, a $who::0, and a "$who's" variable.  The
       last two would be the $0 and the $s variables in the (presumably) non-existent package "who".

       In fact, an identifier within such curlies is forced to be a string, as is any simple identifier
       within a hash subscript.  Neither need quoting.  Our earlier example, $days{'Feb'} can be written as
       $days{Feb} and the quotes will be assumed automatically.  But anything more complicated in the
       subscript will be interpreted as an expression.  This means for example that "$version{2.0}++" is
       equivalent to "$version{2}++", not to "$version{'2.0'}++".

       Version Strings

       A literal of the form "v1.20.300.4000" is parsed as a string composed of characters with the
       specified ordinals.  This form, known as v-strings, provides an alternative, more readable way to
       construct strings, rather than use the somewhat less readable interpolation form
       "\x{1}\x{14}\x{12c}\x{fa0}".  This is useful for representing Unicode strings, and for comparing
       version "numbers" using the string comparison operators, "cmp", "gt", "lt" etc.  If there are two or
       more dots in the literal, the leading "v" may be omitted.

           print v9786;              # prints SMILEY, "\x{263a}"
           print v102.111.111;       # prints "foo"
           print 102.111.111;        # same

       Such literals are accepted by both "require" and "use" for doing a version check.  Note that using
       the v-strings for IPv4 addresses is not portable unless you also use the inet_aton()/inet_ntoa()
       routines of the Socket package.

       Note that since Perl 5.8.1 the single-number v-strings (like "v65") are not v-strings before the "=>"
       operator (which is usually used to separate a hash key from a hash value); instead they are
       interpreted as literal strings ('v65').  They were v-strings from Perl 5.6.0 to Perl 5.8.0, but that
       caused more confusion and breakage than good.  Multi-number v-strings like "v65.66" and 65.66.67
       continue to be v-strings always.

       Special Literals

       The special literals __FILE__, __LINE__, and __PACKAGE__ represent the current filename, line number,
       and package name at that point in your program.  __SUB__ gives a reference to the current subroutine.
       They may be used only as separate tokens; they will not be interpolated into strings.  If there is no
       current package (due to an empty "package;" directive), __PACKAGE__ is the undefined value. (But the
       empty "package;" is no longer supported, as of version 5.10.)  Outside of a subroutine, __SUB__ is
       the undefined value.  __SUB__ is only available in 5.16 or higher, and only with a "use v5.16" or
       "use feature "current_sub"" declaration.

       The two control characters ^D and ^Z, and the tokens __END__ and __DATA__ may be used to indicate the
       logical end of the script before the actual end of file.  Any following text is ignored.

       Text after __DATA__ may be read via the filehandle "PACKNAME::DATA", where "PACKNAME" is the package
       that was current when the __DATA__ token was encountered.  The filehandle is left open pointing to
       the line after __DATA__.  The program should "close DATA" when it is done reading from it.  (Leaving
       it open leaks filehandles if the module is reloaded for any reason, so it's a safer practice to close
       it.)  For compatibility with older scripts written before __DATA__ was introduced, __END__ behaves
       like __DATA__ in the top level script (but not in files loaded with "require" or "do") and leaves the
       remaining contents of the file accessible via "main::DATA".

       See SelfLoader for more description of __DATA__, and an example of its use.  Note that you cannot
       read from the DATA filehandle in a BEGIN block: the BEGIN block is executed as soon as it is seen
       (during compilation), at which point the corresponding __DATA__ (or __END__) token has not yet been
       seen.

       Barewords

       A word that has no other interpretation in the grammar will be treated as if it were a quoted string.
       These are known as "barewords".  As with filehandles and labels, a bareword that consists entirely of
       lowercase letters risks conflict with future reserved words, and if you use the "use warnings" pragma
       or the -w switch, Perl will warn you about any such words.  Perl limits barewords (like identifiers)
       to about 250 characters.  Future versions of Perl are likely to eliminate these arbitrary
       limitations.

       Some people may wish to outlaw barewords entirely.  If you say

           use strict 'subs';

       then any bareword that would NOT be interpreted as a subroutine call produces a compile-time error
       instead.  The restriction lasts to the end of the enclosing block.  An inner block may countermand
       this by saying "no strict 'subs'".

       Array Interpolation

       Arrays and slices are interpolated into double-quoted strings by joining the elements with the
       delimiter specified in the $" variable ($LIST_SEPARATOR if "use English;" is specified), space by
       default.  The following are equivalent:

           $temp = join($", @ARGV);
           system "echo $temp";

           system "echo @ARGV";

       Within search patterns (which also undergo double-quotish substitution) there is an unfortunate
       ambiguity:  Is "/$foo[bar]/" to be interpreted as "/${foo}[bar]/" (where "[bar]" is a character class
       for the regular expression) or as "/${foo[bar]}/" (where "[bar]" is the subscript to array @foo)?  If
       @foo doesn't otherwise exist, then it's obviously a character class.  If @foo exists, Perl takes a
       good guess about "[bar]", and is almost always right.  If it does guess wrong, or if you're just
       plain paranoid, you can force the correct interpretation with curly braces as above.

       If you're looking for the information on how to use here-documents, which used to be here, that's
       been moved to "Quote and Quote-like Operators" in perlop.

   List value constructors
       List values are denoted by separating individual values by commas (and enclosing the list in
       parentheses where precedence requires it):

           (LIST)

       In a context not requiring a list value, the value of what appears to be a list literal is simply the
       value of the final element, as with the C comma operator.  For example,

           @foo = ('cc', '-E', $bar);

       assigns the entire list value to array @foo, but

           $foo = ('cc', '-E', $bar);

       assigns the value of variable $bar to the scalar variable $foo.  Note that the value of an actual
       array in scalar context is the length of the array; the following assigns the value 3 to $foo:

           @foo = ('cc', '-E', $bar);
           $foo = @foo;                # $foo gets 3

       You may have an optional comma before the closing parenthesis of a list literal, so that you can say:

           @foo = (
               1,
               2,
               3,
           );

       To use a here-document to assign an array, one line per element, you might use an approach like this:

           @sauces = <<End_Lines =~ m/(\S.*\S)/g;
               normal tomato
               spicy tomato
               green chile
               pesto
               white wine
           End_Lines

       LISTs do automatic interpolation of sublists.  That is, when a LIST is evaluated, each element of the
       list is evaluated in list context, and the resulting list value is interpolated into LIST just as if
       each individual element were a member of LIST.  Thus arrays and hashes lose their identity in a
       LIST--the list

           (@foo,@bar,&SomeSub,%glarch)

       contains all the elements of @foo followed by all the elements of @bar, followed by all the elements
       returned by the subroutine named SomeSub called in list context, followed by the key/value pairs of
       %glarch.  To make a list reference that does NOT interpolate, see perlref.

       The null list is represented by ().  Interpolating it in a list has no effect.  Thus ((),(),()) is
       equivalent to ().  Similarly, interpolating an array with no elements is the same as if no array had
       been interpolated at that point.

       This interpolation combines with the facts that the opening and closing parentheses are optional
       (except when necessary for precedence) and lists may end with an optional comma to mean that multiple
       commas within lists are legal syntax. The list "1,,3" is a concatenation of two lists, "1," and 3,
       the first of which ends with that optional comma.  "1,,3" is "(1,),(3)" is "1,3" (And similarly for
       "1,,,3" is "(1,),(,),3" is "1,3" and so on.)  Not that we'd advise you to use this obfuscation.

       A list value may also be subscripted like a normal array.  You must put the list in parentheses to
       avoid ambiguity.  For example:

           # Stat returns list value.
           $time = (stat($file))[8];

           # SYNTAX ERROR HERE.
           $time = stat($file)[8];  # OOPS, FORGOT PARENTHESES

           # Find a hex digit.
           $hexdigit = ('a','b','c','d','e','f')[$digit-10];

           # A "reverse comma operator".
           return (pop(@foo),pop(@foo))[0];

       Lists may be assigned to only when each element of the list is itself legal to assign to:

           ($a, $b, $c) = (1, 2, 3);

           ($map{'red'}, $map{'blue'}, $map{'green'}) = (0x00f, 0x0f0, 0xf00);

       An exception to this is that you may assign to "undef" in a list.  This is useful for throwing away
       some of the return values of a function:

           ($dev, $ino, undef, undef, $uid, $gid) = stat($file);

       List assignment in scalar context returns the number of elements produced by the expression on the
       right side of the assignment:

           $x = (($foo,$bar) = (3,2,1));       # set $x to 3, not 2
           $x = (($foo,$bar) = f());           # set $x to f()'s return count

       This is handy when you want to do a list assignment in a Boolean context, because most list functions
       return a null list when finished, which when assigned produces a 0, which is interpreted as FALSE.

       It's also the source of a useful idiom for executing a function or performing an operation in list
       context and then counting the number of return values, by assigning to an empty list and then using
       that assignment in scalar context. For example, this code:

           $count = () = $string =~ /\d+/g;

       will place into $count the number of digit groups found in $string.  This happens because the pattern
       match is in list context (since it is being assigned to the empty list), and will therefore return a
       list of all matching parts of the string. The list assignment in scalar context will translate that
       into the number of elements (here, the number of times the pattern matched) and assign that to
       $count. Note that simply using

           $count = $string =~ /\d+/g;

       would not have worked, since a pattern match in scalar context will only return true or false, rather
       than a count of matches.

       The final element of a list assignment may be an array or a hash:

           ($a, $b, @rest) = split;
           my($a, $b, %rest) = @_;

       You can actually put an array or hash anywhere in the list, but the first one in the list will soak
       up all the values, and anything after it will become undefined.  This may be useful in a my() or
       local().

       A hash can be initialized using a literal list holding pairs of items to be interpreted as a key and
       a value:

           # same as map assignment above
           %map = ('red',0x00f,'blue',0x0f0,'green',0xf00);

       While literal lists and named arrays are often interchangeable, that's not the case for hashes.  Just
       because you can subscript a list value like a normal array does not mean that you can subscript a
       list value as a hash.  Likewise, hashes included as parts of other lists (including parameters lists
       and return lists from functions) always flatten out into key/value pairs.  That's why it's good to
       use references sometimes.

       It is often more readable to use the "=>" operator between key/value pairs.  The "=>" operator is
       mostly just a more visually distinctive synonym for a comma, but it also arranges for its left-hand
       operand to be interpreted as a string if it's a bareword that would be a legal simple identifier.
       "=>" doesn't quote compound identifiers, that contain double colons. This makes it nice for
       initializing hashes:

           %map = (
                        red   => 0x00f,
                        blue  => 0x0f0,
                        green => 0xf00,
          );

       or for initializing hash references to be used as records:

           $rec = {
                       witch => 'Mable the Merciless',
                       cat   => 'Fluffy the Ferocious',
                       date  => '10/31/1776',
           };

       or for using call-by-named-parameter to complicated functions:

          $field = $query->radio_group(
                      name      => 'group_name',
                      values    => ['eenie','meenie','minie'],
                      default   => 'meenie',
                      linebreak => 'true',
                      labels    => \%labels
          );

       Note that just because a hash is initialized in that order doesn't mean that it comes out in that
       order.  See "sort" in perlfunc for examples of how to arrange for an output ordering.

   Subscripts
       An array can be accessed one scalar at a time by specifying a dollar sign ("$"), then the name of the
       array (without the leading "@"), then the subscript inside square brackets.  For example:

           @myarray = (5, 50, 500, 5000);
           print "The Third Element is", $myarray[2], "\n";

       The array indices start with 0. A negative subscript retrieves its value from the end.  In our
       example, $myarray[-1] would have been 5000, and $myarray[-2] would have been 500.

       Hash subscripts are similar, only instead of square brackets curly brackets are used. For example:

           %scientists =
           (
               "Newton" => "Isaac",
               "Einstein" => "Albert",
               "Darwin" => "Charles",
               "Feynman" => "Richard",
           );

           print "Darwin's First Name is ", $scientists{"Darwin"}, "\n";

       You can also subscript a list to get a single element from it:

           $dir = (getpwnam("daemon"))[7];

   Multi-dimensional array emulation
       Multidimensional arrays may be emulated by subscripting a hash with a list. The elements of the list
       are joined with the subscript separator (see "$;" in perlvar).

           $foo{$a,$b,$c}

       is equivalent to

           $foo{join($;, $a, $b, $c)}

       The default subscript separator is "\034", the same as SUBSEP in awk.

   Slices
       A slice accesses several elements of a list, an array, or a hash simultaneously using a list of
       subscripts.  It's more convenient than writing out the individual elements as a list of separate
       scalar values.

           ($him, $her)   = @folks[0,-1];              # array slice
           @them          = @folks[0 .. 3];            # array slice
           ($who, $home)  = @ENV{"USER", "HOME"};      # hash slice
           ($uid, $dir)   = (getpwnam("daemon"))[2,7]; # list slice

       Since you can assign to a list of variables, you can also assign to an array or hash slice.

           @days[3..5]    = qw/Wed Thu Fri/;
           @colors{'red','blue','green'}
                          = (0xff0000, 0x0000ff, 0x00ff00);
           @folks[0, -1]  = @folks[-1, 0];

       The previous assignments are exactly equivalent to

           ($days[3], $days[4], $days[5]) = qw/Wed Thu Fri/;
           ($colors{'red'}, $colors{'blue'}, $colors{'green'})
                          = (0xff0000, 0x0000ff, 0x00ff00);
           ($folks[0], $folks[-1]) = ($folks[-1], $folks[0]);

       Since changing a slice changes the original array or hash that it's slicing, a "foreach" construct
       will alter some--or even all--of the values of the array or hash.

           foreach (@array[ 4 .. 10 ]) { s/peter/paul/ }

           foreach (@hash{qw[key1 key2]}) {
               s/^\s+//;           # trim leading whitespace
               s/\s+$//;           # trim trailing whitespace
               s/(\w+)/\u\L$1/g;   # "titlecase" words
           }

       A slice of an empty list is still an empty list.  Thus:

           @a = ()[1,0];           # @a has no elements
           @b = (@a)[0,1];         # @b has no elements
           @c = (0,1)[2,3];        # @c has no elements

       But:

           @a = (1)[1,0];          # @a has two elements
           @b = (1,undef)[1,0,2];  # @b has three elements

       This makes it easy to write loops that terminate when a null list is returned:

           while ( ($home, $user) = (getpwent)[7,0]) {
               printf "%-8s %s\n", $user, $home;
           }

       As noted earlier in this document, the scalar sense of list assignment is the number of elements on
       the right-hand side of the assignment.  The null list contains no elements, so when the password file
       is exhausted, the result is 0, not 2.

       Slices in scalar context return the last item of the slice.

           @a = qw/first second third/;
           %h = (first => 'A', second => 'B');
           $t = @a[0, 1];                  # $t is now 'second'
           $u = @h{'first', 'second'};     # $u is now 'B'

       If you're confused about why you use an '@' there on a hash slice instead of a '%', think of it like
       this.  The type of bracket (square or curly) governs whether it's an array or a hash being looked at.
       On the other hand, the leading symbol ('$' or '@') on the array or hash indicates whether you are
       getting back a singular value (a scalar) or a plural one (a list).

   Typeglobs and Filehandles
       Perl uses an internal type called a typeglob to hold an entire symbol table entry.  The type prefix
       of a typeglob is a "*", because it represents all types.  This used to be the preferred way to pass
       arrays and hashes by reference into a function, but now that we have real references, this is seldom
       needed.

       The main use of typeglobs in modern Perl is create symbol table aliases.  This assignment:

           *this = *that;

       makes $this an alias for $that, @this an alias for @that, %this an alias for %that, &this an alias
       for &that, etc.  Much safer is to use a reference.  This:

           local *Here::blue = \$There::green;

       temporarily makes $Here::blue an alias for $There::green, but doesn't make @Here::blue an alias for
       @There::green, or %Here::blue an alias for %There::green, etc.  See "Symbol Tables" in perlmod for
       more examples of this.  Strange though this may seem, this is the basis for the whole module
       import/export system.

       Another use for typeglobs is to pass filehandles into a function or to create new filehandles.  If
       you need to use a typeglob to save away a filehandle, do it this way:

           $fh = *STDOUT;

       or perhaps as a real reference, like this:

           $fh = \*STDOUT;

       See perlsub for examples of using these as indirect filehandles in functions.

       Typeglobs are also a way to create a local filehandle using the local() operator.  These last until
       their block is exited, but may be passed back.  For example:

           sub newopen {
               my $path = shift;
               local  *FH;  # not my!
               open   (FH, $path)          or  return undef;
               return *FH;
           }
           $fh = newopen('/etc/passwd');

       Now that we have the *foo{THING} notation, typeglobs aren't used as much for filehandle
       manipulations, although they're still needed to pass brand new file and directory handles into or out
       of functions. That's because *HANDLE{IO} only works if HANDLE has already been used as a handle.  In
       other words, *FH must be used to create new symbol table entries; *foo{THING} cannot.  When in doubt,
       use *FH.

       All functions that are capable of creating filehandles (open(), opendir(), pipe(), socketpair(),
       sysopen(), socket(), and accept()) automatically create an anonymous filehandle if the handle passed
       to them is an uninitialized scalar variable. This allows the constructs such as "open(my $fh, ...)"
       and "open(local $fh,...)" to be used to create filehandles that will conveniently be closed
       automatically when the scope ends, provided there are no other references to them. This largely
       eliminates the need for typeglobs when opening filehandles that must be passed around, as in the
       following example:

           sub myopen {
               open my $fh, "@_"
                    or die "Can't open '@_': $!";
               return $fh;
           }

           {
               my $f = myopen("</etc/motd");
               print <$f>;
               # $f implicitly closed here
           }

       Note that if an initialized scalar variable is used instead the result is different: "my $fh='zzz';
       open($fh, ...)" is equivalent to "open( *{'zzz'}, ...)".  "use strict 'refs'" forbids such practice.

       Another way to create anonymous filehandles is with the Symbol module or with the IO::Handle module
       and its ilk.  These modules have the advantage of not hiding different types of the same name during
       the local().  See the bottom of "open" in perlfunc for an example.

SEE ALSO
       See perlvar for a description of Perl's built-in variables and a discussion of legal variable names.
       See perlref, perlsub, and "Symbol Tables" in perlmod for more discussion on typeglobs and the
       *foo{THING} syntax.



perl v5.16.2                                     2012-10-25                                      PERLDATA(1)