Question

I have this example:

my $numbers = [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ];
my $newarray = [ reverse @$numbers ];

This example contains some synthetic code to make the $numbers arrayref appropriate for the reverse function. I would like to remove that code and do something more like this:

my $newarray = reverse $numbers;

I know this doesn’t work, it returns:

)8936f22x0(YARRA

Is there a better way to reverse an arrayref in Perl without changing the first line?

UPDATE:

my $mails = [ reverse @{$mail_api->GetLogSendMail({ customer_id => $id })} ];

The idea is to make the above line of code better.

Answer 1

If you are ok to use array instead of arrayref, then try this:

my @newarray = reverse @$numbers;

Code my $newarray = reverse $numbers didn’t work because reverse is called in scalar context, which make it return a string with charactes in reversed order. From reverse manual:

In scalar context, concatenates the elements of LIST and returns a string value with all characters in the opposite order.

If you declare $newarray variable somewhere above you can write it in following way:

## declare $newarray somewhere else
@$newarray = reverse @$numbers;

Update

May be you would like to create your own function:

sub reverse_by_ref {
    return [ reverse @{$_[0]} ];
}