Question

I have some code like:

my %hosts = (
    'USAmazon' => ['US','CA'],
    'EUAmazon' => ['GB', 'FR', 'IT', 'ES', 'DE'],
    'CNAmazon' => ['CN'],
    'JPAmazon' => ['JP'],
);

my @values = $hosts{$ARGV[0]};

I see that $values[0][0] holds US and $values[0][1] holds CA. Why is that so? Please explain.

Also, how do I find out the length of $values[0]?

scalar $values[0] prints out something like ARRAY(0x12FFc) blah..blah…

Any links are also helpful.

Answer 1

Array and hash values are always scalars. In this case, for existing elements, $hosts{$ARGV[0]} is a scalar containing a reference to an array. You need to dereference that reference to get the array.

my $length = @{ $hosts{$ARGV[0]} };