How can I print the contents of a hash in Perl?

Solution 1:

Data::Dumper is your friend.

use Data::Dumper;
my %hash = ('abc' => 123, 'def' => [4,5,6]);
print Dumper(\%hash);

will output

$VAR1 = {
          'def' => [
                     4,
                     5,
                     6
                   ],
          'abc' => 123
        };

Solution 2:

Easy:

print "$_ $h{$_}\n" for (keys %h);

Elegant, but actually 30% slower (!):

while (my ($k,$v)=each %h){print "$k $v\n"}

Solution 3:

Here how you can print without using Data::Dumper

print "@{[%hash]}";

Solution 4:

For debugging purposes I will often use YAML.

use strict;
use warnings;

use YAML;

my %variable = ('abc' => 123, 'def' => [4,5,6]);

print "# %variable\n", Dump \%variable;

Results in:

# %variable
---
abc: 123
def:
  - 4
  - 5
  - 6

Other times I will use Data::Dump. You don't need to set as many variables to get it to output it in a nice format than you do for Data::Dumper.

use Data::Dump = 'dump';

print dump(\%variable), "\n";

{ abc => 123, def => [4, 5, 6] }

More recently I have been using Data::Printer for debugging.

use Data::Printer;
p %variable;

{
    abc   123,
    def   [
        [0] 4,
        [1] 5,
        [2] 6
    ]
}

( Result can be much more colorful on a terminal )

Unlike the other examples I have shown here, this one is designed explicitly to be for display purposes only. Which shows up more easily if you dump out the structure of a tied variable or that of an object.

use strict;
use warnings;

use MTie::Hash;
use Data::Printer;

my $h = tie my %h, "Tie::StdHash";
@h{'a'..'d'}='A'..'D';
p %h;
print "\n";
p $h;

{
    a   "A",
    b   "B",
    c   "C",
    d   "D"
} (tied to Tie::StdHash)

Tie::StdHash  {
    public methods (9) : CLEAR, DELETE, EXISTS, FETCH, FIRSTKEY, NEXTKEY, SCALAR, STORE, TIEHASH
    private methods (0)
    internals: {
        a   "A",
        b   "B",
        c   "C",
        d   "D"
    }
}

Solution 5:

The answer depends on what is in your hash. If you have a simple hash a simple

print map { "$_ $h{$_}\n" } keys %h;

or

print "$_ $h{$_}\n" for keys %h;

will do, but if you have a hash that is populated with references you will something that can walk those references and produce a sensible output. This walking of the references is normally called serialization. There are many modules that implement different styles, some of the more popular ones are:

• Data::Dumper
• Data::Dump::Streamer
• YAML::XS
• JSON::XS
• XML::Dumper

Due to the fact that Data::Dumper is part of the core Perl library, it is probably the most popular; however, some of the other modules have very good things to offer.