Why is there an arrow between $a and [2], but not between [2] and {“bar”}, in th...

Enk1du · 2025-10-06T10:33:52 1759746832

I suppose it's because very soon people got tired of writing

  $a->[2]->{"bar"}

which is equivalent and also works, but suffers from the explosion of punctuation that Perl often gets criticised for. There's an element of Do What I Mean where the first arrow says this is a reference and work the rest out for me.

odc · 2025-10-06T12:45:21 1759754721

In Perl -> is the dereference operator, similar to C.

So when you see

    $a->[2]{"bar"}

then $a is an array reference where each item is a hashmap. But with

    $a->[2]->{"bar"}

then $a is an array reference where each item is a reference to a hashmap.

zaucker · 2025-10-07T20:20:42 1759868442

$a->[2]->{"bar"} is the same as $a->[2]{"bar"} or as $a->[2]{bar}