CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xmlperl
Zhuotao Liu
Zhuotao Liu

Reputation: 19

A data structure in Perl (retrieved by XML::Simple)

What this structure in perl means: 

$VAR1 = {
      'hostname' => {
                      'name' => 'computer'
                      'role' => [
                                  {
                                    'a' => 'bcd',
                                  },
                                ]
                     }
     }

I got this using XML::Simple. But what the square brackets means?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 99

Answers (2)

cforbish
cforbish

Reputation: 8819

The '[]' characters begin and end an array. The '{}' symbols are for a hash. In this case 'role' is an array of hashes. It only had one item and with two items would have looked like:

'role' => [
              {
                  'a' => 'bcd',
              },
              {
                  'e' => 'fgh',
              },
          ]

Upvotes: 0

RET
RET

Reputation: 9188

It means role points to an array of values. In your specific example the array only has a single element - a hash ref.

There is some discussion in the man page for XML::Simple about controlling how these values are returned. You probably want to look at KeyAttr settings.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions