Perl OOP method returns array I cannot loop - perl

Question

Here is what my module looks like:
#!/usr/bin/perl
package Page;
use strict;
use warnings;
use base qw/DBObj/;
our %fields = (
id => undef,
title => '$',
content => '$'
);
sub get_field_names {
my #names = sort keys \%fields;
return \#names;
}
for my $field ( keys %fields ) {
my $slot = __PACKAGE__ ."::$field";
no strict "refs";
*$field = sub {
my $self = shift;
$self->{$slot} = shift if #_;
return $self->{$slot};
}
}
1;
Here the parent module where the strange behaviour occurs
#!/usr/bin/perl
package DBObj;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
use DBConn;
sub new {
my $me = shift;
my $class = ref $me || $me;
my $self = {
dbh => new DBConn->new(
dns => '/db.sql',
user => '',
pass => '',
)
};
return bless $self, $class;
}
sub save {
my $self = shift;
my #field_names = #{$self->get_field_names};
print Dumper #field_names;
foreach my $item ( reverse #field_names ) {
print $item;
}
}
sub fill {
my ( $self, $args ) = #_;
foreach my $key ( keys $args ) {
$self->$key( $args->{$key} );
}
}
1;
here is what I am experiencing. This snippet
my #field_names = $self->get_field_names;
print Dumper #field_names;
foreach my $item ( reverse #field_names ) {
print $item;
}
Data::Dumper shows
$VAR1 = [
'content',
'id',
'title'
];
But the foreach loop returns
ARRAY(0x7fc750a26470)
I have a Test::Simple test case where I perform the following test
ok( shift $page->get_field_names eq 'content', 'Page has field content');
so I can shift off an item from the array, but I cannot loop through it which is a puzzle to me.
And please; before you tell me that I shouldn't be doing this and that there is a ton of modules out there I should pick instead, I want to point out; I am doing this our of pure fun, I have been away from Perl for ~10 years and thought it would be fun to play around with it again.

Answer 1

You have made get_field_names return a reference to an array, but you are then putting that reference into an array variable.
Try:
my $field_names = $self->get_field_names;
print Dumper $field_names;
foreach my $item ( reverse #$field_names ) {
print $item;
}

Answer 2

get_field_names returns an arrayref, not an array. Either change its return type by removing the backslash from return \#names; or "cast" its return type to an array by writing:
my #field_names = #{$self->get_field_names};