Section 4.3. Dereferencing the Array Reference


4.3. Dereferencing the Array Reference

If you look at @skipper, you'll see that it consists of two parts: the @ symbol and the name of the array. Similarly, the syntax $skipper[1] consists of the name of the array in the middle and some syntax around the outside to get at the second element of the array (index value 1 is the second element because index values start at 0).

Here's the trick: we can place any reference to an array in curly braces in place of the name of an array, ending up with a method to access the original array. That is, wherever we write skipper to name the array, we use the reference inside curly braces: { $items }. For example, both of these lines refer to the entire array:

 @  skipper @{ $items } 

whereas both of these refer to the second item of the array:[*]

[*] Note that we added whitespace in these two displays to make the similar parts line up. This whitespace is legal in a program, even though most programs won't use it.

 $  skipper [1] ${ $items }[1] 

By using the reference form, we've decoupled the code and the method of array access from the actual array. Let's see how that changes the rest of this subroutine:

 sub check_required_items {   my $who   = shift;   my $items = shift;   my @required = qw(preserver sunscreen water_bottle jacket);   for my $item (@required) {     unless (grep $item eq $_, @{$items}) { # not found in list?       print "$who is missing $item.\n";     }   } } 

All we did was replace @_ (the copy of the provisions list) with @{$items}, a dereferencing of the reference to the original provisions array. Now we can call the subroutine a few times, as before:

 my @skipper = qw(blue_shirt hat jacket preserver sunscreen); check_required_items('The Skipper', \@skipper); my @professor = qw(sunscreen water_bottle slide_rule batteries radio); check_required_items('Professor', \@professor); my @gilligan = qw(red_shirt hat lucky_socks water_bottle); check_required_items('Gilligan', \@gilligan); 

In each case, $items points to a different array, so the same code applies to different arrays each time we invoke it. This is one of the most important uses of references: decoupling the code from the data structure on which it operates so we can reuse the code more readily.

Passing the array by reference fixes the first of the two problems we mentioned earlier. Now, instead of copying the entire provision list into the @_ array, we get a single element of a reference to that provisions array.

Could we have eliminated the two shifts at the beginning of the subroutine? Sure, but we sacrifice clarity:

 sub check_required_items {   my @required = qw(preserver sunscreen water_bottle jacket);   for my $item (@required) {     unless (grep $item eq $_, @{$_[1]}) { # not found in list?       print "$_[0] is missing $item.\n";     }   } } 

We still have two elements in @_. The first element is the passenger or crew member name, which we use in the error message. The second element is a reference to the correct provisions array, which we use in the grep expression.




Intermediate Perl
Intermediate Perl
ISBN: 0596102062
EAN: 2147483647
Year: N/A
Pages: 238

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