Question

I have a recursive function that uses ref to walk down a data structure recursively. If ref returns an empty string, then a callback is called. My problem is that I need to store a hash-ref in my data structure that will be treated as a scalar by my function.

In essence, what I need is to do something like this;

    my %hash = fillHash();
    $hash{'abc'}{'def'} = \%hash;

I was wondering if there was some way of storing \%hash in such a way that it would be treated as a scalar and not a reference. possibly like/

     $hash{'abc'}{'def'} = scalar \%hash;

I am simply looking a way to add a link to the parent node of my data structure, yet still being able to recursively walk it.

Thanks

Answer 1

You could use what I did to differentiate values from structure, I call them “indirect arrays” (in my case).

In your case it would look like this:

 $hash{'abc'}{'def'} = scalar \\%hash;

ref( $hash{'abc'}{'def'} ) is 'REF', in case you’re wondering. And you can then decide that you need to dereference it twice:

$hash_ref = ${ $hash{'abc'}{'def'} };