Orton, Yves writes:
> > (There's equivalent reasoning behind the existence of
> > push_attribute().)
>
> But in this case its unwarranted.
>
> my $foo=undef;
> push @$foo,"Bar";
> print "@$foo\n";
But if the undef is returned from a function, the autovivification only
happens to the local copy, not the version used by the function:
my %hash;
sub a { return $hash{foo} }
my $foo = a();
push @$foo, "Bar";
print "@$foo\n";
print "@{$hash{foo}}\n";
Compare with:
my %hash;
push @{$hash{foo}}, 'Hello';
sub a { return $hash{foo} }
my $foo = a();
push @$foo, "Bar";
print "@$foo\n";
print "@{$hash{foo}}\n";
Hence the need for a method that always results in pushing on to the
array reference stored in the hash, regardless of whether it already has
any values in there.
Smylers
