I am having trouble with my array of references which point to another array. Here's a snippet of my code:
# @bah is a local variable array that's been populated, @foo is also initialized as a global variable
$foo[9] = \@bah;
# this works perfectly, printing the first element of the array @bah
print $foo[9][0]."\n";
# this does not work, nothing gets printed
foreach (@$foo[9]) {
print $_."\n";
}
Always use strict; and use warnings;.
The @ dereference takes precedence, so @$foo[9] expects $foo to be an array reference and gets element 9 from that array. You want @{$foo[9]}. use strict would have alerted you that $foo was being used, not @foo.
For some easily memorizable rules for dereferencing, see http://perlmonks.org/?node=References+quick+reference.
Like ysth says, you need to use braces to properly dereference $foo[9] into the array it points to.
You may however also want to be aware that using \@bah you are directly referencing the array. So that if change @bah later on, you will change $foo[9] as well:
my @bah = (1,2,3);
$foo[9] = \@bah;
@bah = ('a','b','c');
print qq(@{$foo[9]});
This will print a b c, and not 1 2 3.
To only copy the values from @bah, instead dereference $foo:
@{$foo[9]} = @bah;
