3 perllol - Manipulating Arrays of Arrays in Perl
7 =head2 Declaration and Access of Arrays of Arrays
9 The simplest two-level data structure to build in Perl is an array of
10 arrays, sometimes casually called a list of lists. It's reasonably easy to
11 understand, and almost everything that applies here will also be applicable
12 later on with the fancier data structures.
14 An array of an array is just a regular old array @AoA that you can
15 get at with two subscripts, like C<$AoA[3][2]>. Here's a declaration
18 use 5.010; # so we can use say()
20 # assign to our array, an array of array references
22 [ "fred", "barney", "pebbles", "bambam", "dino", ],
23 [ "george", "jane", "elroy", "judy", ],
24 [ "homer", "bart", "marge", "maggie", ],
29 Now you should be very careful that the outer bracket type
30 is a round one, that is, a parenthesis. That's because you're assigning to
31 an @array, so you need parentheses. If you wanted there I<not> to be an @AoA,
32 but rather just a reference to it, you could do something more like this:
34 # assign a reference to array of array references
36 [ "fred", "barney", "pebbles", "bambam", "dino", ],
37 [ "george", "jane", "elroy", "judy", ],
38 [ "homer", "bart", "marge", "maggie", ],
40 say $ref_to_AoA->[2][1];
43 Notice that the outer bracket type has changed, and so our access syntax
44 has also changed. That's because unlike C, in perl you can't freely
45 interchange arrays and references thereto. $ref_to_AoA is a reference to an
46 array, whereas @AoA is an array proper. Likewise, C<$AoA[2]> is not an
47 array, but an array ref. So how come you can write these:
52 instead of having to write these:
57 Well, that's because the rule is that on adjacent brackets only (whether
58 square or curly), you are free to omit the pointer dereferencing arrow.
59 But you cannot do so for the very first one if it's a scalar containing
60 a reference, which means that $ref_to_AoA always needs it.
62 =head2 Growing Your Own
64 That's all well and good for declaration of a fixed data structure,
65 but what if you wanted to add new elements on the fly, or build
66 it up entirely from scratch?
68 First, let's look at reading it in from a file. This is something like
69 adding a row at a time. We'll assume that there's a flat file in which
70 each line is a row and each word an element. If you're trying to develop an
71 @AoA array containing all these, here's the right way to do that:
78 You might also have loaded that from a function:
81 $AoA[$i] = [ somefunc($i) ];
84 Or you might have had a temporary variable sitting around with the
92 It's important you make sure to use the C<[ ]> array reference
93 constructor. That's because this wouldn't work:
95 $AoA[$i] = @tmp; # WRONG!
97 The reason that doesn't do what you want is because assigning a
98 named array like that to a scalar is taking an array in scalar
99 context, which means just counts the number of elements in @tmp.
101 If you are running under C<use strict> (and if you aren't, why in
102 the world aren't you?), you'll have to add some declarations to
112 Of course, you don't need the temporary array to have a name at all:
115 push @AoA, [ split ];
118 You also don't have to use push(). You could just make a direct assignment
119 if you knew where you wanted to put it:
121 my (@AoA, $i, $line);
124 $AoA[$i] = [ split " ", $line ];
131 $AoA[$i] = [ split " ", <> ];
134 You should in general be leery of using functions that could
135 potentially return lists in scalar context without explicitly stating
136 such. This would be clearer to the casual reader:
140 $AoA[$i] = [ split " ", scalar(<>) ];
143 If you wanted to have a $ref_to_AoA variable as a reference to an array,
144 you'd have to do something like this:
147 push @$ref_to_AoA, [ split ];
150 Now you can add new rows. What about adding new columns? If you're
151 dealing with just matrices, it's often easiest to use simple assignment:
155 $AoA[$x][$y] = func($x, $y);
160 $AoA[$x][20] += func2($x);
163 It doesn't matter whether those elements are already
164 there or not: it'll gladly create them for you, setting
165 intervening elements to C<undef> as need be.
167 If you wanted just to append to a row, you'd have
168 to do something a bit funnier looking:
170 # add new columns to an existing row
171 push @{ $AoA[0] }, "wilma", "betty"; # explicit deref
173 Prior to Perl 5.14, this wouldn't even compile:
175 push $AoA[0], "wilma", "betty"; # implicit deref
177 How come? Because once upon a time, the argument to push() had to be a
178 real array, not just a reference to one. That's no longer true. In fact,
179 the line marked "implicit deref" above works just fine--in this
180 instance--to do what the one that says explicit deref did.
182 The reason I said "in this instance" is because that I<only> works
183 because C<$AoA[0]> already held an array reference. If you try that on an
184 undefined variable, you'll take an exception. That's because the implicit
185 derefererence will never autovivify an undefined variable the way C<@{ }>
189 push $aref, qw(some more values); # WRONG!
190 push @$aref, qw(a few more); # ok
192 If you want to take advantage of this new implicit dereferencing behavior,
193 go right ahead: it makes code easier on the eye and wrist. Just understand
194 that older releases will choke on it during compilation. Whenever you make
195 use of something that works only in some given release of Perl and later,
196 but not earlier, you should place a prominent
198 use v5.14; # needed for implicit deref of array refs by array ops
200 directive at the top of the file that needs it. That way when somebody
201 tries to run the new code under an old perl, rather than getting an error like
203 Type of arg 1 to push must be array (not array element) at /tmp/a line 8, near ""betty";"
204 Execution of /tmp/a aborted due to compilation errors.
206 they'll be politely informed that
208 Perl v5.14.0 required--this is only v5.12.3, stopped at /tmp/a line 1.
209 BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /tmp/a line 1.
211 =head2 Access and Printing
213 Now it's time to print your data structure out. How
214 are you going to do that? Well, if you want only one
215 of the elements, it's trivial:
219 If you want to print the whole thing, though, you can't
224 because you'll get just references listed, and perl will never
225 automatically dereference things for you. Instead, you have to
226 roll yourself a loop or two. This prints the whole structure,
227 using the shell-style for() construct to loop across the outer
231 say "\t [ @$aref ],";
234 If you wanted to keep track of subscripts, you might do this:
236 for $i ( 0 .. $#AoA ) {
237 say "\t elt $i is [ @{$AoA[$i]} ],";
240 or maybe even this. Notice the inner loop.
242 for $i ( 0 .. $#AoA ) {
243 for $j ( 0 .. $#{$AoA[$i]} ) {
244 say "elt $i $j is $AoA[$i][$j]";
248 As you can see, it's getting a bit complicated. That's why
249 sometimes is easier to take a temporary on your way through:
251 for $i ( 0 .. $#AoA ) {
253 for $j ( 0 .. $#{$aref} ) {
254 say "elt $i $j is $AoA[$i][$j]";
258 Hmm... that's still a bit ugly. How about this:
260 for $i ( 0 .. $#AoA ) {
264 say "elt $i $j is $AoA[$i][$j]";
268 When you get tired of writing a custom print for your data structures,
269 you might look at the standard L<Dumpvalue> or L<Data::Dumper> modules.
270 The former is what the Perl debugger uses, while the latter generates
271 parsable Perl code. For example:
273 use v5.14; # using the + prototype, new to v5.14
277 state $prettily = new Dumpvalue::
279 compactDump => 1, # comment these two lines out
280 veryCompact => 1, # if you want a bigger dump
282 dumpValue $prettily @_;
285 # Assign a list of array references to an array.
287 [ "fred", "barney" ],
288 [ "george", "jane", "elroy" ],
289 [ "homer", "marge", "bart" ],
291 push $AoA[0], "wilma", "betty";
296 0 0..3 "fred" "barney" "wilma" "betty"
297 1 0..2 "george" "jane" "elroy"
298 2 0..2 "homer" "marge" "bart"
300 Whereas if you comment out the two lines I said you might wish to,
301 then it shows it to you this way instead:
319 If you want to get at a slice (part of a row) in a multidimensional
320 array, you're going to have to do some fancy subscripting. That's
321 because while we have a nice synonym for single elements via the
322 pointer arrow for dereferencing, no such convenience exists for slices.
324 Here's how to do one operation using a loop. We'll assume an @AoA
329 for ($y = 7; $y < 13; $y++) {
330 push @part, $AoA[$x][$y];
333 That same loop could be replaced with a slice operation:
335 @part = @{$AoA[4]}[7..12];
339 @part = @{ $AoA[4] } [ 7..12 ];
341 But as you might well imagine, this can get pretty rough on the reader.
343 Ah, but what if you wanted a I<two-dimensional slice>, such as having
344 $x run from 4..8 and $y run from 7 to 12? Hmm... here's the simple way:
347 for ($startx = $x = 4; $x <= 8; $x++) {
348 for ($starty = $y = 7; $y <= 12; $y++) {
349 $newAoA[$x - $startx][$y - $starty] = $AoA[$x][$y];
353 We can reduce some of the looping through slices
355 for ($x = 4; $x <= 8; $x++) {
356 push @newAoA, [ @{ $AoA[$x] } [ 7..12 ] ];
359 If you were into Schwartzian Transforms, you would probably
360 have selected map for that
362 @newAoA = map { [ @{ $AoA[$_] } [ 7..12 ] ] } 4 .. 8;
364 Although if your manager accused you of seeking job security (or rapid
365 insecurity) through inscrutable code, it would be hard to argue. :-)
366 If I were you, I'd put that in a function:
368 @newAoA = splice_2D( \@AoA, 4 => 8, 7 => 12 );
370 my $lrr = shift; # ref to array of array refs!
375 [ @{ $lrr->[$_] } [ $y_lo .. $y_hi ] ]
382 L<perldata>, L<perlref>, L<perldsc>
386 Tom Christiansen <F<tchrist@perl.com>>
388 Last update: Tue Apr 26 18:30:55 MDT 2011