1PERLLOL(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLLOL(1)
2
6 perllol - Manipulating Arrays of Arrays in Perl
7
9 Declaration and Access of Arrays of Arrays
10 The simplest two-level data structure to build in Perl is an array of
11 arrays, sometimes casually called a list of lists. It's reasonably
12 easy to understand, and almost everything that applies here will also
13 be applicable later on with the fancier data structures.
14 An array of an array is just a regular old array @AoA that you can get
16 at with two subscripts, like $AoA[3][2]. Here's a declaration of the
17 array:
18 use 5.010; # so we can use say()
20 # assign to our array, an array of array references
22 @AoA = (
23 [ "fred", "barney", "pebbles", "bambam", "dino", ],
24 [ "george", "jane", "elroy", "judy", ],
25 [ "homer", "bart", "marge", "maggie", ],
26 );
27 say $AoA[2][1];
28 bart
29 Now you should be very careful that the outer bracket type is a round
31 one, that is, a parenthesis. That's because you're assigning to an
32 @array, so you need parentheses. If you wanted there not to be an
33 @AoA, but rather just a reference to it, you could do something more
34 like this:
35 # assign a reference to array of array references
37 $ref_to_AoA = [
38 [ "fred", "barney", "pebbles", "bambam", "dino", ],
39 [ "george", "jane", "elroy", "judy", ],
40 [ "homer", "bart", "marge", "maggie", ],
41 ];
42 say $ref_to_AoA->[2][1];
43 bart
44 Notice that the outer bracket type has changed, and so our access
46 syntax has also changed. That's because unlike C, in perl you can't
47 freely interchange arrays and references thereto. $ref_to_AoA is a
48 reference to an array, whereas @AoA is an array proper. Likewise,
49 $AoA[2] is not an array, but an array ref. So how come you can write
50 these:
51 $AoA[2][2]
53 $ref_to_AoA->[2][2]
54 instead of having to write these:
56 $AoA[2]->[2]
58 $ref_to_AoA->[2]->[2]
59 Well, that's because the rule is that on adjacent brackets only
61 (whether square or curly), you are free to omit the pointer
62 dereferencing arrow. But you cannot do so for the very first one if
63 it's a scalar containing a reference, which means that $ref_to_AoA
64 always needs it.
65 Growing Your Own
67 That's all well and good for declaration of a fixed data structure, but
68 what if you wanted to add new elements on the fly, or build it up
69 entirely from scratch?
70 First, let's look at reading it in from a file. This is something like
72 adding a row at a time. We'll assume that there's a flat file in which
73 each line is a row and each word an element. If you're trying to
74 develop an @AoA array containing all these, here's the right way to do
75 that:
76 while (<>) {
78 @tmp = split;
79 push @AoA, [ @tmp ];
80 }
81 You might also have loaded that from a function:
83 for $i ( 1 .. 10 ) {
85 $AoA[$i] = [ somefunc($i) ];
86 }
87 Or you might have had a temporary variable sitting around with the
89 array in it.
90 for $i ( 1 .. 10 ) {
92 @tmp = somefunc($i);
93 $AoA[$i] = [ @tmp ];
94 }
95 It's important you make sure to use the "[ ]" array reference
97 constructor. That's because this wouldn't work:
98 $AoA[$i] = @tmp; # WRONG!
100 The reason that doesn't do what you want is because assigning a named
102 array like that to a scalar is taking an array in scalar context, which
103 means just counts the number of elements in @tmp.
104 If you are running under "use strict" (and if you aren't, why in the
106 world aren't you?), you'll have to add some declarations to make it
107 happy:
108 use strict;
110 my(@AoA, @tmp);
111 while (<>) {
112 @tmp = split;
113 push @AoA, [ @tmp ];
114 }
115 Of course, you don't need the temporary array to have a name at all:
117 while (<>) {
119 push @AoA, [ split ];
120 }
121 You also don't have to use push(). You could just make a direct
123 assignment if you knew where you wanted to put it:
124 my (@AoA, $i, $line);
126 for $i ( 0 .. 10 ) {
127 $line = <>;
128 $AoA[$i] = [ split " ", $line ];
129 }
130 or even just
132 my (@AoA, $i);
134 for $i ( 0 .. 10 ) {
135 $AoA[$i] = [ split " ", <> ];
136 }
137 You should in general be leery of using functions that could
139 potentially return lists in scalar context without explicitly stating
140 such. This would be clearer to the casual reader:
141 my (@AoA, $i);
143 for $i ( 0 .. 10 ) {
144 $AoA[$i] = [ split " ", scalar(<>) ];
145 }
146 If you wanted to have a $ref_to_AoA variable as a reference to an
148 array, you'd have to do something like this:
149 while (<>) {
151 push @$ref_to_AoA, [ split ];
152 }
153 Now you can add new rows. What about adding new columns? If you're
155 dealing with just matrices, it's often easiest to use simple
156 assignment:
157 for $x (1 .. 10) {
159 for $y (1 .. 10) {
160 $AoA[$x][$y] = func($x, $y);
161 }
162 }
163 for $x ( 3, 7, 9 ) {
165 $AoA[$x][20] += func2($x);
166 }
167 It doesn't matter whether those elements are already there or not:
169 it'll gladly create them for you, setting intervening elements to
170 "undef" as need be.
171 If you wanted just to append to a row, you'd have to do something a bit
173 funnier looking:
174 # add new columns to an existing row
176 push @{ $AoA[0] }, "wilma", "betty"; # explicit deref
177 Access and Printing
179 Now it's time to print your data structure out. How are you going to
180 do that? Well, if you want only one of the elements, it's trivial:
181 print $AoA[0][0];
183 If you want to print the whole thing, though, you can't say
185 print @AoA; # WRONG
187 because you'll get just references listed, and perl will never
189 automatically dereference things for you. Instead, you have to roll
190 yourself a loop or two. This prints the whole structure, using the
191 shell-style for() construct to loop across the outer set of subscripts.
192 for $aref ( @AoA ) {
194 say "\t [ @$aref ],";
195 }
196 If you wanted to keep track of subscripts, you might do this:
198 for $i ( 0 .. $#AoA ) {
200 say "\t elt $i is [ @{$AoA[$i]} ],";
201 }
202 or maybe even this. Notice the inner loop.
204 for $i ( 0 .. $#AoA ) {
206 for $j ( 0 .. $#{$AoA[$i]} ) {
207 say "elt $i $j is $AoA[$i][$j]";
208 }
209 }
210 As you can see, it's getting a bit complicated. That's why sometimes
212 is easier to take a temporary on your way through:
213 for $i ( 0 .. $#AoA ) {
215 $aref = $AoA[$i];
216 for $j ( 0 .. $#{$aref} ) {
217 say "elt $i $j is $AoA[$i][$j]";
218 }
219 }
220 Hmm... that's still a bit ugly. How about this:
222 for $i ( 0 .. $#AoA ) {
224 $aref = $AoA[$i];
225 $n = @$aref - 1;
226 for $j ( 0 .. $n ) {
227 say "elt $i $j is $AoA[$i][$j]";
228 }
229 }
230 When you get tired of writing a custom print for your data structures,
232 you might look at the standard Dumpvalue or Data::Dumper modules. The
233 former is what the Perl debugger uses, while the latter generates
234 parsable Perl code. For example:
235 use v5.14; # using the + prototype, new to v5.14
237 sub show(+) {
239 require Dumpvalue;
240 state $prettily = new Dumpvalue::
241 tick => q("),
242 compactDump => 1, # comment these two lines
243 # out
244 veryCompact => 1, # if you want a bigger
245 # dump
246 ;
247 dumpValue $prettily @_;
248 }
249 # Assign a list of array references to an array.
251 my @AoA = (
252 [ "fred", "barney" ],
253 [ "george", "jane", "elroy" ],
254 [ "homer", "marge", "bart" ],
255 );
256 push @{ $AoA[0] }, "wilma", "betty";
257 show @AoA;
258 will print out:
260 0 0..3 "fred" "barney" "wilma" "betty"
262 1 0..2 "george" "jane" "elroy"
263 2 0..2 "homer" "marge" "bart"
264 Whereas if you comment out the two lines I said you might wish to, then
266 it shows it to you this way instead:
267 0 ARRAY(0x8031d0)
269 0 "fred"
270 1 "barney"
271 2 "wilma"
272 3 "betty"
273 1 ARRAY(0x803d40)
274 0 "george"
275 1 "jane"
276 2 "elroy"
277 2 ARRAY(0x803e10)
278 0 "homer"
279 1 "marge"
280 2 "bart"
281 Slices
283 If you want to get at a slice (part of a row) in a multidimensional
284 array, you're going to have to do some fancy subscripting. That's
285 because while we have a nice synonym for single elements via the
286 pointer arrow for dereferencing, no such convenience exists for slices.
287 Here's how to do one operation using a loop. We'll assume an @AoA
289 variable as before.
290 @part = ();
292 $x = 4;
293 for ($y = 7; $y < 13; $y++) {
294 push @part, $AoA[$x][$y];
295 }
296 That same loop could be replaced with a slice operation:
298 @part = @{$AoA[4]}[7..12];
300 or spaced out a bit:
302 @part = @{ $AoA[4] } [ 7..12 ];
304 But as you might well imagine, this can get pretty rough on the reader.
306 Ah, but what if you wanted a two-dimensional slice, such as having $x
308 run from 4..8 and $y run from 7 to 12? Hmm... here's the simple way:
309 @newAoA = ();
311 for ($startx = $x = 4; $x <= 8; $x++) {
312 for ($starty = $y = 7; $y <= 12; $y++) {
313 $newAoA[$x - $startx][$y - $starty] = $AoA[$x][$y];
314 }
315 }
316 We can reduce some of the looping through slices
318 for ($x = 4; $x <= 8; $x++) {
320 push @newAoA, [ @{ $AoA[$x] } [ 7..12 ] ];
321 }
322 If you were into Schwartzian Transforms, you would probably have
324 selected map for that
325 @newAoA = map { [ @{ $AoA[$_] } [ 7..12 ] ] } 4 .. 8;
327 Although if your manager accused you of seeking job security (or rapid
329 insecurity) through inscrutable code, it would be hard to argue. :-) If
330 I were you, I'd put that in a function:
331 @newAoA = splice_2D( \@AoA, 4 => 8, 7 => 12 );
333 sub splice_2D {
334 my $lrr = shift; # ref to array of array refs!
335 my ($x_lo, $x_hi,
336 $y_lo, $y_hi) = @_;
337 return map {
339 [ @{ $lrr->[$_] } [ $y_lo .. $y_hi ] ]
340 } $x_lo .. $x_hi;
341 }
342
344 perldata, perlref, perldsc
345
347 Tom Christiansen <tchrist@perl.com>
348 Last update: Tue Apr 26 18:30:55 MDT 2011
350perl v5.26.3 2018-03-01 PERLLOL(1)