At 08:41 -0700 4/5/06, Stewart Leicester wrote: > >'defined' will autovivify, 'exists' will not. I'll leave it up to Doug to >decide if knowing that helps.
The Camel book, page 710 in the third edition is very clear that exists goes the same way as defined. But perl has gone through a couple of new versions since it was written. Thanks to Stewart who did get me on the right track by mentioning exists. That's where I found autovivification mentioned in the Bible. It also says there: "This behavior is likely to be fixed in a future release." In 5.8.1-RC3 it hasn't changed. I wonder if the comment refers to perl6 ? Do those fellows know about it? The solution for my problem was to test just the hash element without looking at the underlying list item. Exists and defined both work that way without behaving like the Creator. Checking for the list item = "" also works if the vivifivation has occurred. I appreciate the help from the list -- --> Science is the business of discovering and codifying the rules and methods employed by the Intelligent Designer. Religions provide myths to mollify the anxiety experienced by those who choose not to participate. <--
