On Jul 10, 12:10 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Gowtham) wrote:
> Interestingly, A hash in a scalar context returns some fraction.
>
> Like, this code
>
> @array = ( 1 .. 100 );
> %hash = @array;
> print scalar %hash, "\n";
>
> prints
>
> 33/64
>
> Can somebody help me understand what this 33/64 is?
Yes. Perl can. Fire up a command line window, and type:
perldoc perldata
Among other useful information, you will find:
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.
Paul Lalli
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://learn.perl.org/
