Perl array vs list

Question

I have two data structures in Perl:

An array:

my @array2 = ( \"1\", \"2\", \"3\");

for $elem (@array2) {
    print $elem.\"\\n\";
}

<

Answer 1

The square brackets create an anonymous array, populate the array with the contents of the brackets, and return a reference to that array. In other words,

[ "1", "2", "3" ]

is basically the same as

do { my @anon = ("1", "2", "3"); \@anon }

So the code should look like

my $array_ref = [ "1", "2", "3" ];

for (@$array_ref) {  # Short for @{ $array_ref }
    print "$_\n";
}

or

my @array_of_refs = ([ "1", "2", "3" ]);

for my $array_ref (@array_of_refs) {
    for (@$array_ref) {
        print "$_\n";
    }
}