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perlhashhashref

How can I reference a hash using a variable name?

I have a set of pre-defined hash tables and I want to reference one of those hashes using a variable name and access a key value. The following code just returns null even though the hash is populated. What am I doing wrong here, or is there a better way to achieve this?

my %TEXT1 = (1 => 'Hello World',);
my %TEXT2 = (1 => 'Hello Mars',);
my %TEXT3 = (1 => 'Hello Venus',);

my $hash_name = 'TEXT1';

my $hash_ref = \%$hash_name;
print ${$hash_ref}{1};  #prints nothing
Solution

  • Use a hash to contain your hashes.

    my %texts = (
    TEXT1 => { 1 => 'Hello world', },
    TEXT2 => { 1 => 'Hello Mars', },
    TEXT3 => { 1 => 'Hello Venus', },
)

my $hash_name = 'TEXT1';

print $texts{$hash_name}{1}, "\n";