[Chicago-talk] Deprecated use of hash as a reference

Steven Lembark lembark at wrkhors.com
Thu Apr 8 12:02:05 PDT 2010


On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:21:27 -0500
Brad Doty <bdoty at eqtc.com> wrote:

> Imran & Lee,
> 
> Well, that's the obvious choice, isn't it?
> 
> BTW, I still think it is STUPID that Perl hides all the %'s and @'s in
> almost every practical use of a hash and array.  I understand why it's
> $array[0], but I DON'T like it!  If it's an array, it should use the
> array symbol!

It does use the array symbol: [] is the symbol for
accessing an array.

$ is the symbol for retrieving a scalar.
@ is the symbol for retrieving a list.

q.e.d., $array[ $i ] indicates the extraction a
scalar ('$') out of the array ([]).

extraction of a list from the array uses

    @foo[ $begin .. $end ]
    
for the same reason: [] indicates "foo" is an array
"@" indicates a list extracted.

ditto @bar{ qw( bletch blort blam ) } taking
a list from the hash 'bar'.

It's all out in the open.

The difference is that

    $foo{ bar } = bletch 1;
    @foo{ bar } = bletch 1;

Produce a different context for the call to bletch.

-- 
Steven Lembark                                            85-09 90th St.
Workhorse Computing                                 Woodhaven, NY, 11421
lembark at wrkhors.com                                      +1 888 359 3508


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