I was pondering on the question of whether I could make an array ref in one line in Perl. Sort of like you would define an array. I would normally do the following:
#!/usr/bin/perl# your code goes hereuse warnings;use strict;use Data::Dumper;my @array = qw(test if this works);my $arrayref = \@array;print Dumper($arrayref);My thought was you should be able to just do:
my $arrayref = \(qw(test if this works);This, however, does not work the way I expected. Is this even possible?
Best Answer
You can do that by using the 'square-bracketed anonymous array constructor' for it. It will create an array reference 'literal'
my $arrayref = [ qw(test if this works) ];or list every member out:
my $arrayref = [ 'test', 'if', 'this', 'works' ];You could verify both results with Data Dumper:
$VAR1 = ['test','if','this','works'];If your goal is to create an array reference in one line, use square brackets to create an array reference, which creates an anonymous array.
use Data::Dumper;my $arrayRef = [qw(test if this works)];print Dumper($arrayRef);So if this is what you are looking to do, it is possible.