Question

Is it possible to assign the reference of an array as the value in the key : value pair of a hash table in perl?

Answer 1

Yes it is. Create a reference to the array by using backslash:

$hash{key} = \@array;

Note that this will link to the actual array, so if you perform a change such as:

$array[0] = "foo";

That will also mean that $hash{key}[0] is set to "foo".

If that is not what you want, you may copy the values by using an anonymous array reference [ ... ]:

$hash{key} = [ @array ];

Moreover, you don’t have to go through the array in order to do this. You can simply assign directly:

$hash{key} = [ qw(foo bar baz) ];

Read more about making references in perldoc perlref