Confusing Perl Array behavior

Question

I'm working with the Perl API of an Infoblox appliance (doc: https://ipam.illinois.edu/api/doc/)

I have the following code:

...

my $specificRecord = $recordResults[0];

say $specificRecord->name();

foreach ($specificRecord->ipv4addrs())
{
    say $_;
}

$specificRecord contains an Infoblox::DNS::Host record object.

My problem comes when I'm iterating over ipv4addrs(). According to the documentation and the perl debugger, ipv4addrs() returns an ARRAY containing IPs or DHCP::FixedAddr objects.

In my case, if I debug my program and "x" $specificRecord->ipv4addrs() as well as $_, I get the same result:

DB<1> b 70

DB<2> c
Results: 1
aaaa9999test.justice
main::(testScript2.pl:70):          foreach ($specificRecord->ipv4addrs())
main::(testScript2.pl:71):          {

DB<2> x $specificRecord->ipv4addrs();
0  ARRAY(0x64e9e3c)
   0  '8.8.8.8'
   1  '8.8.4.4'

DB<3> n
main::(testScript2.pl:72):              say $_;

DB<3> x $_;
0  ARRAY(0x64e9e3c)
   0  '8.8.8.8'
   1  '8.8.4.4'

Here is a relevant portion of "x" of the Infoblox::DNS::Host object:

DB<2> x $specificRecord;
0  Infoblox::DNS::Host=HASH(0x8b3eacc)
   '__object_id__' => 'dns.host$._default.justice.aaaa9999test'
   'aliases' => ARRAY(0x8b3e9fc)
        empty array
   'configure_for_dns' => 'true'
   'disable' => 'false'
   'ipv4addrs' => ARRAY(0x64e9e3c)
      0  '8.8.8.8'
      1  '8.8.4.4'
   'ipv6addrs' => ARRAY(0x8aa1bac)
        empty array
   'name' => 'aaaa9999test.justice'
   ...

I can't tell what I'm doing wrong and why foreach doesn't work with the $_ variable. I tried assigning ipv4addrs() to an array and then foreaching over that, to no avail.

Tim · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-08 21:46:39Z

8

It's returning an array reference. Try dereferencing it:

foreach ( @{ $specificRecord->ipv4addrs() } )

answered Nov 8, 2012 at 21:46

Tim

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2 Comments

Brad Gilbert Over a year ago

@gparent it would be even more confusing, if it dereferenced the array ref for you.

gparent Over a year ago

Oh I'm sure, it's just that this sort of problem seems more immediately obvious in other programming languages. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm definitely inexperienced with Perl and I like learning more about it, but that's my opinion so far. When I said stupidity I didn't want to imply that the language was wrong, but that I spent a lot of time on something silly :)

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