Question

Is there a way to get a sub-hash? Do I need to use a hash slice?

For example:

%hash = ( a => 1, b => 2, c => 3 );

I want only

%hash = ( a => 1, b => 2 );

Answer 1

Hash slices return the values associated with a list of keys. To get a hash slice you change the sigil to @ and provide a list of keys (in this case "a" and "b"):

my @items = @hash{"a", "b"};

Often you can use a quote word operator to produce the list:

my @items = @hash{qw/a b/};

You can also assign to a hash slice, so if you want a new hash that contains a subset of another hash you can say

my %new_hash;
@new_hash{qw/a b/} = @hash{qw/a b/};

Many people will use a map instead of hash slices:

my %new_hash = map { $_ => $hash{$_} } qw/a b/;

Starting with Perl 5.20.0, you can get the keys and the values in one step if you use the % sigil instead of the @ sigil:

use v5.20;
my %new_hash = %hash{qw/a b/};