On 9/17/07, Rob Dixon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Chas Owens wrote:
> >
> > On 9/17/07, Jeff Pang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>
> >> 2007/9/17, W. Sp. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >>>
> >>> Also, while using LWP modules, what type of
> >>> data is $content = get($url)? Is it an array? Is there a way to find out
> >>> what kind of data a particular variable stores?
> >>
> >> It's a scalar.
> >> you can use 'ref' to find out the variable type,like,
> >>
> >> $ perl -MLWP::Simple -e '$c=get "http://www.aol.com/";print ref \$c'
> >> SCALAR
> >
> > You should probable not call ref in this way. If $c had held a
> > reference to an array it would have printed REF instead of ARRAY. Non
> > reference values return undef when passed to ref. If you see SCALAR
> > that means the value is a reference to a scalar. If you really want
> > to see output you should say something like this:
> >
> > perl -MLWP::Simple -le '$c = get "http://3.am";print ref $c ? ref $c :
> > "SCALAR VALUE"'
>
> Jeff's original post is very misleading. The use of LWP is ineffectual and
> his code shows nothing about the contents of the scalar variable, only the
> fact that it is, indeed, a scalar. It is equivalent to:
>
> $ perl -e 'print ref \$c'
>
> which also prints 'SCALAR'. Hooray!
It isn't completely ineffectual, just misleading. If LWP::Simple::get
had returned an arrayref then it would have said printed REF instead
of SCALAR:
perl -le '$c=[];print ref \$c'
REF
The problem is that it says the same thing for a hashref:
perl -le '$c={};print ref \$c'
REF
or even a scalarref
perl -le '$c=\$c;print ref \$c'
REF
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://learn.perl.org/
