On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Oded Arbel wrote: > Hi list! > > I have a simple perl question, if you please : > I have a function that needs to return a hash (%) to the caller - it does so > something like this : > <snip> > return %temp; > </snip> > and I call it like this : > <snip> > %result = subname(params); > </snip> > now, I want to detect when that functin fails completly, so - when it does > this, it returns a non-defined value : > <snip> > return undef. > </snip> > and now when I try to detect it : > <snip> > if (!defined %result) { > </snip> > it ofcourse doesn't work. so my question is - how should I try to detect the > undefined value ? > I advise you to pass the Hash as a reference. Like this: sub myfunc { ... return \%temp; } And then $hash_ref = myfunc(); Then you can check if $hash_ref is undef. If it's not: you can dereference it into a hash: %hash = %{$hash_ref}; For more information consult the perlref manpage. Hope it helps. Shlomi Fish ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/ Home E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The prefix "God Said" has the extraordinary logical property of converting any statement that follows it into a true one. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]