Demystifying the Perl glob (*)

by

Assignment to a glob

*glob = VALUE

contains some magic that depends on the type of VALUE (i.e., return value of, say, Scalar::Util::reftype(VALUE)). If VALUE is a reference to a scalar, array, hash, or subroutine, then only that entry in the symbol table will be overwritten.

This idiom

local *array = shift();
#use @array here

works as documented when the first argument to the subroutine is an array reference. If the first argument was instead, say, a scalar reference, then only $array and not @array would be affected by the assignment.

A little demo script to see what is going on:

no strict;

sub F {
  local *array = shift;

  print "\@array = @array\n";
  print "\$array = $array\n";
  print "\%array = ",%array,"\n";
  print "------------------\n";
}

$array = "original scalar";
%array = ("original" => "hash");
@array = ("orignal","array");

$foo = "foo";
@foo = ("foo","bar");
%foo = ("FOO" => "foo");

F ["new","array"];        # array reference
F \"new scalar";          # scalar reference
F {"new" => "hash"};      # hash reference
F *foo;                   # typeglob
F 'foo';                  # not a reference, but name of assigned variable
F 'something else';       # not a reference
F ();                     # undef

Output:

@array = new array
$array = original scalar
%array = originalhash
------------------
@array = orignal array
$array = new scalar
%array = originalhash
------------------
@array = orignal array
$array = original scalar
%array = newhash
------------------
@array = foo bar
$array = foo
%array = FOOfoo
------------------
@array = foo bar
$array = foo
%array = FOOfoo
------------------
@array =
$array =
%array =
------------------
@array = orignal array
$array = original scalar
%array = originalhash
------------------

Additional doc at perlmod and perldata. Back in the days before references were a part of Perl, this idiom was helpful for passing arrays and hashes into subroutines.

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