Anomalous push behaviour under Catalyst MVC - perl

Question

I would expect the following code
my #array;
for my $rapport ( qw( value1 value2 value3 ) ) {
push #array, { key => $rapport };
}
to produce:
$VAR1 = [
{
'key' => 'value1'
},
{
'key' => 'value2'
},
{
'key' => 'value3'
}
];
However, running this code segment under Catalyst MVC I get:
$VAR1 = [
{
'key' => [ 'value', 'value2', 'value3' ]
},
];
Can someone please explain to me why?
EDIT: could anyone with the same issue please add an example? I cannot reproduce after some code changes, but as it has been upvoted 5 times I assume some other users have also experienced this issue?

Answer 1

This code example...
#!/usr/bin/perl
use Data::Dumper;
my #input = ( "var1", "var2", "var3" );
my #array;
for my $rapport ( #input ) {
push #array, { key => $rapport };
}
print Dumper( \#array );
exit;
produces ...
$VAR1 = [
{
'key' => 'var1'
},
{
'key' => 'var2'
},
{
'key' => 'var3'
}
];
But the following...
#!/usr/bin/perl
use Data::Dumper;
my #input = [ "var1", "var2", "var3" ]; # sometimes people forget to dereference their variables
my #array;
for my $rapport ( #input ) {
push #array, { key => $rapport };
}
print Dumper( \#array );
exit;
shows...
$VAR1 = [
{
'key' => [
'var1',
'var2',
'var3'
]
}
];
As you can see both examples loop through an array but the second one is an array, that was initialized with a reference value. Since in Catalyst you normally ship various values through your application via stash or similar constructs, you could check weather your array really contains scalar values : )