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Perl – References ”; Previous Next A Perl reference is a scalar data type that holds the location of another value which could be scalar, arrays, or hashes. Because of its scalar nature, a reference can be used anywhere, a scalar can be used. You can construct lists containing references to other lists, which can contain references to hashes, and so on. This is how the nested data structures are built in Perl. Create References It is easy to create a reference for any variable, subroutine or value by prefixing it with a backslash as follows − $scalarref = $foo; $arrayref = @ARGV; $hashref = %ENV; $coderef = &handler; $globref = *foo; You cannot create a reference on an I/O handle (filehandle or dirhandle) using the backslash operator but a reference to an anonymous array can be created using the square brackets as follows − $arrayref = [1, 2, [”a”, ”b”, ”c”]]; Similar way you can create a reference to an anonymous hash using the curly brackets as follows − $hashref = { ”Adam” => ”Eve”, ”Clyde” => ”Bonnie”, }; A reference to an anonymous subroutine can be created by using sub without a subname as follows − $coderef = sub { print “Boink!n” }; Dereferencing Dereferencing returns the value from a reference point to the location. To dereference a reference simply use $, @ or % as prefix of the reference variable depending on whether the reference is pointing to a scalar, array, or hash. Following is the example to explain the concept − Live Demo #!/usr/bin/perl $var = 10; # Now $r has reference to $var scalar. $r = $var; # Print value available at the location stored in $r. print “Value of $var is : “, $$r, “n”; @var = (1, 2, 3); # Now $r has reference to @var array. $r = @var; # Print values available at the location stored in $r. print “Value of @var is : “, @$r, “n”; %var = (”key1” => 10, ”key2” => 20); # Now $r has reference to %var hash. $r = %var; # Print values available at the location stored in $r. print “Value of %var is : “, %$r, “n”; When above program is executed, it produces the following result − Value of 10 is : 10 Value of 1 2 3 is : 123 Value of %var is : key220key110 If you are not sure about a variable type, then its easy to know its type using ref, which returns one of the following strings if its argument is a reference. Otherwise, it returns false − SCALAR ARRAY HASH CODE GLOB REF Let”s try the following example − Live Demo #!/usr/bin/perl $var = 10; $r = $var; print “Reference type in r : “, ref($r), “n”; @var = (1, 2, 3); $r = @var; print “Reference type in r : “, ref($r), “n”; %var = (”key1” => 10, ”key2” => 20); $r = %var; print “Reference type in r : “, ref($r), “n”; When above program is executed, it produces the following result − Reference type in r : SCALAR Reference type in r : ARRAY Reference type in r : HASH Circular References A circular reference occurs when two references contain a reference to each other. You have to be careful while creating references otherwise a circular reference can lead to memory leaks. Following is an example − Live Demo #!/usr/bin/perl my $foo = 100; $foo = $foo; print “Value of foo is : “, $$foo, “n”; When above program is executed, it produces the following result − Value of foo is : REF(0x9aae38) References to Functions This might happen if you need to create a signal handler so you can produce a reference to a function by preceding that function name with & and to dereference that reference you simply need to prefix reference variable using ampersand &. Following is an example − Live Demo #!/usr/bin/perl # Function definition sub PrintHash { my (%hash) = @_; foreach $item (%hash) { print “Item : $itemn”; } } %hash = (”name” => ”Tom”, ”age” => 19); # Create a reference to above function. $cref = &PrintHash; # Function call using reference. &$cref(%hash); When above program is executed, it produces the following result − Item : name Item : Tom Item : age Item : 19 Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;