On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 09:25 -0500, Ricardo SIGNES wrote:
> @{ $children{$v} } means:
> get the scalar stored in $children{$v} (which is an entry in
> %children) and dereference it as an array
>
> In other words:
>
> my $entry = $children{$v};
> @$entry;
>
First, Thank You for your reply.
I thought about that as a possibility, but rejected it because I never
saw the %children hash ever get initialized with even a single key/value
pair. As far as I can tell, $children{anything at all} is undef. I know
that's incorrect since the code works, but I can't see how it works. I
understand that autovivification is creating things on the fly as
needed, but see no mechanism to supply a key/value pair.
The push is extracting a value to be used as an array reference, but to
extract a value, one must be there to begin with and I can't see how a
value was ever supplied.
> @$children{$v}, which you suggested, would mean:
>
> get the hash slice of all entries in the hash to which $children
> refers, containing the following keys: $v
>
> In other words, with an only slight change in meaning:
>
> my $hashref = $children;
> my %hash = %$hashref;
> @hash{($v)};
I'll study that one after I TOTALLY understand my original problem.
Thank you for another eye opener & head scratcher.
--
Bill Gradwohl
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