How to print the values of array reference in PERL? - perl

Question

I have a defined days array with the square bracket in Perl. I want to access each element of the array.
A similar example from the code below(This is just a snippet of code):-
#days = [a,2,3];
foreach(#days){print "$_\n";}
print "\n\n #days";
And output is
ARRAY(0x2032950)
ARRAY(0x2032950)
I need to access the array elementS but I cannot change the #days declaration.
The following code is not working as well:-
#days = [a,2,3];
use feature qw<say>;
foreach(#days){print "$_\n";}
print "\n\n #days\n";
print "#$days\n";
say $_ for $days->#*;

Answer 1

Attn: OP - array declaration is not correct.
If you can not change array declaration (it is not clear what is the cause) then print them with following code
use strict;
use warnings;
use feature 'say';
my #days = ['a',2,3];
say for #{$days[0]};
say "Number of elements: " . scalar #{$days[0]};
Proper code should be
use strict;
use warnings;
use feature 'say';
my #days = ('a',2,3);
say for #days;
say "Number of elements: " . scalar #days;
Following piece of code demonstrates how array created, using this information is easy to figure out how to access stored values of array elements
use strict;
use warnings;
use feature 'say';
use Data::Dumper;
my #days = ['a',2,3];
say Dumper(\#days);
Output
$VAR1 = [
[
'a',
2,
3
]
];

Answer 2

I think you accidentally have an extra layer in your data.
When you use the square braces, you are actually using the anonymous array constructor. That returns an array reference, which is a scalar (single item). You probably didn't mean to assign that to an array since you get an array of one element where that one element is the reference. This effectively makes a double-level hash:
my #days = [ 'a', 1, 2 ]; # probably wrong
Since the array reference is a scalar, you likely mean to assign it to a scalar with the $ (single item) sigil. you don't use # because the reference points to an array. The sigil is more about the container than the data:
my $days = [ 'a', 1, 2 ];
When you have the array reference, there are various ways to get its elements. Since it's a simple scalar (not a single element access to an array or hash), you can prefix it with # (the multiple element sigil) to treat it as an array:
my #elements = #$days;
# OR
foreach my $element ( #$days ) {
say "Element: $element";
}
You can even interpolate that just like a named array:
say "Elements are #$days";

Answer 3

Here's a way to print the array reference:
#! /usr/bin/env perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use feature qw<say>;
my $arr_ref = [1,2,3];
say for $arr_ref->#*;