[perl] How to use foreach with a hash reference?

I have this code

foreach my $key (keys %ad_grp) {

    # Do something
}

which works.

How would the same look like, if I don't have %ad_grp, but a reference, $ad_grp_ref, to the hash?

So, with Perl 5.20, the new answer is:

foreach my $key (keys $ad_grp_ref->%*) {

(which has the advantage of transparently working with more complicated expressions:

foreach my $key (keys $ad_grp_obj[3]->get_ref()->%*) {

etc.)

See perlref for the full documentation.

Note: in Perl version 5.20 and 5.22, this syntax is considered experimental, so you need

use feature 'postderef';
no warnings 'experimental::postderef';

at the top of any file that uses it. Perl 5.24 and later don't require any pragmas for this feature.

As others have stated, you have to dereference the reference. The keys function requires that its argument starts with a %:

My preference:

foreach my $key (keys %{$ad_grp_ref}) {

According to Conway:

foreach my $key (keys %{ $ad_grp_ref }) {

Guess who you should listen to...

You might want to read through the Perl Reference Documentation.

If you find yourself doing a lot of stuff with references to hashes and hashes of lists and lists of hashes, you might want to start thinking about using Object Oriented Perl. There's a lot of nice little tutorials in the Perl documentation.

In Perl 5.14 (it works in now in Perl 5.13), we'll be able to just use keys on the hash reference

use v5.13.7;

foreach my $key (keys $ad_grp_ref) {
    ...
}