Perl: Print Array or Hashtable

By Xah Lee. Date: .

Print Array or Hashtable

if you want to print array or hashtable for later reading into Perl program, you'll need to use module Data::Dumper.

use utf8;
use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Indent = 0;
# set it to print in a compact way

@ss = (3, 4, 5);
%ss = qw(mary 17 joe 18 alice 19);
# qw for autoquote, same as ('mary' => 17, 'joe' => 18, 'alice' => 19)

print Dumper(\@ss), "\n";
# $VAR1 = [3,4,5];

print Dumper(\%ss), "\n";
# $VAR1 = {'alice' => '19','joe' => '18','mary' => '17'};

The backslash in front of array variable is necessary. It returns the “reference” of the array, and the argument to Dumper must be a reference.

Perl String

Perl, data structure