What's the safest way to iterate through the k

Question

If I have a Perl hash with a bunch of (key, value) pairs, what is the preferred method of iterating through all the keys? I have heard that using each may in some way have unintended side effects. So, is that true, and is one of the two following methods best, or is there a better way?

# Method 1
while (my ($key, $value) = each(%hash)) {
    # Something
}

# Method 2
foreach my $key (keys(%hash)) {
    # Something
}

Answer 1

The place where each can cause you problems is that it's a true, non-scoped iterator. By way of example:

while ( my ($key,$val) = each %a_hash ) {
    print "$key => $val\n";
    last if $val; #exits loop when $val is true
}

# but "each" hasn't reset!!
while ( my ($key,$val) = each %a_hash ) {
    # continues where the last loop left off
    print "$key => $val\n";
}

If you need to be sure that each gets all the keys and values, you need to make sure you use keys or values first (as that resets the iterator). See the documentation for each.

Answer 2

I always use method 2 as well. The only benefit of using each is if you're just reading (rather than re-assigning) the value of the hash entry, you're not constantly de-referencing the hash.

Answer 3

I may get bitten by this one but I think that it's personal preference. I can't find any reference in the docs to each() being different than keys() or values() (other than the obvious "they return different things" answer. In fact the docs state the use the same iterator and they all return actual list values instead of copies of them, and that modifying the hash while iterating over it using any call is bad.

All that said, I almost always use keys() because to me it is usually more self documenting to access the key's value via the hash itself. I occasionally use values() when the value is a reference to a large structure and the key to the hash was already stored in the structure, at which point the key is redundant and I don't need it. I think I've used each() 2 times in 10 years of Perl programming and it was probably the wrong choice both times =)