perldata.pod

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=head1 NAME

perldata - Perl data types

=head1 DESCRIPTION

=head2 Variable names

Perl has three data structures: scalars, arrays of scalars, and
associative arrays of scalars, known as "hashes".  Normal arrays are
indexed by number, starting with 0.  (Negative subscripts count from
the end.)  Hash arrays are indexed by string.

Values are usually referred to by name (or through a named reference).
The first character of the name tells you to what sort of data
structure it refers.  The rest of the name tells you the particular
value to which it refers.  Most often, it consists of a single
I<identifier>, that is, a string beginning with a letter or underscore,
and containing letters, underscores, and digits.  In some cases, it
may be a chain of identifiers, separated by C<::> (or by C<'>, but
that's deprecated); all but the last are interpreted as names of
packages, to locate the namespace in which to look
up the final identifier (see L<perlmod/Packages> for details).
It's possible to substitute for a simple identifier an expression
that produces a reference to the value at runtime; this is
described in more detail below, and in L<perlref>.

There are also special variables whose names don't follow these
rules, so that they don't accidentally collide with one of your
normal variables.  Strings that match parenthesized parts of a
regular expression are saved under names containing only digits after
the C<$> (see L<perlop> and L<perlre>).  In addition, several special
variables that provide windows into the inner working of Perl have names
containing punctuation characters (see L<perlvar>).

Scalar values are always named with '$', even when referring to a scalar
that is part of an array.  It works like the English word "the".  Thus
we have:

    $days		# the simple scalar value "days"
    $days[28]		# the 29th element of array @days
    $days{'Feb'}	# the 'Feb' value from hash %days
    $#days		# the last index of array @days

but entire arrays or array slices are denoted by '@', which works much like
the word "these" or "those":

    @days		# ($days[0], $days[1],... $days[n])
    @days[3,4,5]	# same as @days[3..5]
    @days{'a','c'}	# same as ($days{'a'},$days{'c'})

and entire hashes are denoted by '%':

    %days		# (key1, val1, key2, val2 ...)

In addition, subroutines are named with an initial '&', though this is
optional when it's otherwise unambiguous (just as "do" is often
redundant in English).  Symbol table entries can be named with an
initial '*', but you don't really care about that yet.

Every variable type has its own namespace.  You can, without fear of
conflict, use the same name for a scalar variable, an array, or a hash
(or, for that matter, a filehandle, a subroutine name, or a label).
This means that $foo and @foo are two different variables.  It also
means that C<$foo[1]> is a part of @foo, not a part of $foo.  This may
seem a bit weird, but that's okay, because it is weird.

Because variable and array references always start with '$', '@', or '%',
the "reserved" words aren't in fact reserved with respect to variable
names.  (They ARE reserved with respect to labels and filehandles,
however, which don't have an initial special character.  You can't have
a filehandle named "log", for instance.  Hint: you could say
C<open(LOG,'logfile')> rather than C<open(log,'logfile')>.  Using uppercase
filehandles also improves readability and protects you from conflict
with future reserved words.)  Case I<IS> significant--"FOO", "Foo", and
"foo" are all different names.  Names that start with a letter or
underscore may also contain digits and underscores.

It is possible to replace such an alphanumeric name with an expression
that returns a reference to an object of that type.  For a description
of this, see L<perlref>.

Names that start with a digit may contain only more digits.  Names
that do not start with a letter, underscore, or digit are limited to
one character, e.g.,  C<$%> or C<$$>.  (Most of these one character names
have a predefined significance to Perl.  For instance, C<$$> is the
current process id.)

=head2 Context

The interpretation of operations and values in Perl sometimes depends
on the requirements of the context around the operation or value.
There are two major contexts: scalar and list.  Certain operations
return list values in contexts wanting a list, and scalar values
otherwise.  (If this is true of an operation it will be mentioned in
the documentation for that operation.)  In other words, Perl overloads
certain operations based on whether the expected return value is
singular or plural.  (Some words in English work this way, like "fish"
and "sheep".)

In a reciprocal fashion, an operation provides either a scalar or a
list context to each of its arguments.  For example, if you say

    int( <STDIN> )

the integer operation provides a scalar context for the E<lt>STDINE<gt>
operator, which responds by reading one line from STDIN and passing it
back to the integer operation, which will then find the integer value
of that line and return that.  If, on the other hand, you say

    sort( <STDIN> )

then the sort operation provides a list context for E<lt>STDINE<gt>, which
will proceed to read every line available up to the end of file, and
pass that list of lines back to the sort routine, which will then
sort those lines and return them as a list to whatever the context
of the sort was.

Assignment is a little bit special in that it uses its left argument to
determine the context for the right argument.  Assignment to a scalar
evaluates the righthand side in a scalar context, while assignment to
an array or array slice evaluates the righthand side in a list
context.  Assignment to a list also evaluates the righthand side in a
list context.

User defined subroutines may choose to care whether they are being
called in a scalar or list context, but most subroutines do not
need to care, because scalars are automatically interpolated into
lists.  See L<perlfunc/wantarray>.

=head2 Scalar values

All data in Perl is a scalar or an array of scalars or a hash of scalars.
Scalar variables may contain various kinds of singular data, such as
numbers, strings, and references.  In general, conversion from one form to
another is transparent.  (A scalar may not contain multiple values, but
may contain a reference to an array or hash containing multiple values.)
Because of the automatic conversion of scalars, operations, and functions
that return scalars don't need to care (and, in fact, can't care) whether
the context is looking for a string or a number.

Scalars aren't necessarily one thing or another.  There's no place to
declare a scalar variable to be of type "string", or of type "number", or
type "filehandle", or anything else.  Perl is a contextually polymorphic
language whose scalars can be strings, numbers, or references (which
includes objects).  While strings and numbers are considered pretty
much the same thing for nearly all purposes, references are strongly-typed
uncastable pointers with builtin reference-counting and destructor
invocation.

A scalar value is interpreted as TRUE in the Boolean sense if it is not
the null string or the number 0 (or its string equivalent, "0").  The
Boolean context is just a special kind of scalar context.

There are actually two varieties of null scalars: defined and
undefined.  Undefined null scalars are returned when there is no real
value for something, such as when there was an error, or at end of
file, or when you refer to an uninitialized variable or element of an
array.  An undefined null scalar may become defined the first time you
use it as if it were defined, but prior to that you can use the
defined() operator to determine whether the value is defined or not.

To find out whether a given string is a valid nonzero number, it's usually
enough to test it against both numeric 0 and also lexical "0" (although
this will cause B<-w> noises).  That's because strings that aren't
numbers count as 0, just as they do in B<awk>:

    if ($str == 0 && $str ne "0")  {
	warn "That doesn't look like a number";
    }

That's usually preferable because otherwise you won't treat IEEE notations
like C<NaN> or C<Infinity> properly.  At other times you might prefer to
use the POSIX::strtod function or a regular expression to check whether
data is numeric.  See L<perlre> for details on regular expressions.

    warn "has nondigits"	if     /\D/;
    warn "not a natural number" unless /^\d+$/;             # rejects -3
    warn "not an integer"       unless /^-?\d+$/;           # rejects +3
    warn "not an integer"       unless /^[+-]?\d+$/;
    warn "not a decimal number" unless /^-?\d+\.?\d*$/;     # rejects .2
    warn "not a decimal number" unless /^-?(?:\d+(?:\.\d*)?|\.\d+)$/;
    warn "not a C float"
	unless /^([+-]?)(?=\d|\.\d)\d*(\.\d*)?([Ee]([+-]?\d+))?$/;

The length of an array is a scalar value.  You may find the length of
array @days by evaluating C<$#days>, as in B<csh>.  (Actually, it's not
the length of the array, it's the subscript of the last element, because
there is (ordinarily) a 0th element.)  Assigning to C<$#days> changes the
length of the array.  Shortening an array by this method destroys
intervening values.  Lengthening an array that was previously shortened
I<NO LONGER> recovers the values that were in those elements.  (It used to
in Perl 4, but we had to break this to make sure destructors were
called when expected.)  You can also gain some miniscule measure of efficiency by
pre-extending an array that is going to get big.  (You can also extend
an array by assigning to an element that is off the end of the array.)
You can truncate an array down to nothing by assigning the null list ()
to it.  The following are equivalent:

    @whatever = ();
    $#whatever = -1;

If you evaluate a named array in a scalar context, it returns the length of
the array.  (Note that this is not true of lists, which return the
last value, like the C comma operator, nor of built-in functions, which return
whatever they feel like returning.)  The following is always true:

    scalar(@whatever) == $#whatever - $[ + 1;

Version 5 of Perl changed the semantics of C<$[>: files that don't set
the value of C<$[> no longer need to worry about whether another
file changed its value.  (In other words, use of C<$[> is deprecated.)
So in general you can assume that

    scalar(@whatever) == $#whatever + 1;

Some programmers choose to use an explicit conversion so nothing's
left to doubt:

    $element_count = scalar(@whatever);

If you evaluate a hash in a scalar context, it returns a value that is
true if and only if the hash contains any key/value pairs.  (If there
are any key/value pairs, the value returned is a string consisting of
the number of used buckets and the number of allocated buckets, separated
by a slash.  This is pretty much useful only to find out whether Perl's
(compiled in) hashing algorithm is performing poorly on your data set.
For example, you stick 10,000 things in a hash, but evaluating %HASH in
scalar context reveals "1/16", which means only one out of sixteen buckets
has been touched, and presumably contains all 10,000 of your items.  This
isn't supposed to happen.)

You can preallocate space for a hash by assigning to the keys() function.
This rounds up the allocated bucked to the next power of two:

    keys(%users) = 1000;		# allocate 1024 buckets

=head2 Scalar value constructors

Numeric literals are specified in any of the customary floating point or
integer formats:

    12345
    12345.67
    .23E-10
    0xffff		# hex
    0377		# octal
    4_294_967_296	# underline for legibility

String literals are usually delimited by either single or double
quotes.  They work much like shell quotes: double-quoted string
literals are subject to backslash and variable substitution;
single-quoted strings are not (except for "C<\'>" and "C<\\>").
The usual Unix backslash rules apply for making characters such as
newline, tab, etc., as well as some more exotic forms.  See
L<perlop/Quote and Quotelike Operators> for a list.

Octal or hex representations in string literals (e.g. '0xffff') are not
automatically converted to their integer representation.  The hex() and
oct() functions make these conversions for you.  See L<perlfunc/hex> and
L<perlfunc/oct> for more details.

You can also embed newlines directly in your strings, i.e., they can end
on a different line than they begin.  This is nice, but if you forget
your trailing quote, the error will not be reported until Perl finds
another line containing the quote character, which may be much further
on in the script.  Variable substitution inside strings is limited to
scalar variables, arrays, and array slices.  (In other words,
names beginning with $ or @, followed by an optional bracketed
expression as a subscript.)  The following code segment prints out "The
price is $Z<>100."

    $Price = '$100';	# not interpreted
    print "The price is $Price.\n";	# interpreted

As in some shells, you can put curly brackets around the name to
delimit it from following alphanumerics.  In fact, an identifier
within such curlies is forced to be a string, as is any single
identifier within a hash subscript.  Our earlier example,

    $days{'Feb'}

can be written as

    $days{Feb}

and the quotes will be assumed automatically.  But anything more complicated
in the subscript will be interpreted as an expression.

Note that a
single-quoted string must be separated from a preceding word by a
space, because single quote is a valid (though deprecated) character in
a variable name (see L<perlmod/Packages>).

Three special literals are __FILE__, __LINE__, and __PACKAGE__, which
represent the current filename, line number, and package name at that
point in your program.  They may be used only as separate tokens; they
will not be interpolated into strings.  If there is no current package
(due to an empty C<package;> directive), __PACKAGE__ is the undefined value.

The tokens __END__ and __DATA__ may be used to indicate the logical end
of the script before the actual end of file.  Any following text is