Out of memory during array extend

Use a hash if you want a sparse list in Perl!

If you set up a list in Perl and don't fill all the members from zero up, that's OK but all the missing elements will actually use up some memory as they'll point to an "undef" value. So this happens:

Dorothy:ppcsrd08 grahamellis$ perl

$num[1223776336] = 0;

Out of memory during array extend at - line 2.

Dorothy:ppcsrd08 grahamellis$

That's attempting to create over 1 billion members of a list ... which would take an awful lot of memory.

You can, however, use a hash instead:

Dorothy:ppcsrd08 grahamellis$ perl

$num{1223776336} = 0;

Dorothy:ppcsrd08 grahamellis$

In a hash you name rather than number your elements ... but an element can be named with any scalar, thus allowing to produce a sparse collection - one in which you don't have to predefine a whole lot of keys in order to reach the one that you need.

Lists are written with square brackets - [ and ] - round each member, but members of a hash are written with curly braces - { and }. If you refer to the whole of a list, use the "@" character, but if you refer to the whole of a hash, use a "%".

You can learn a lot more about lists and hashes on our Perl Programming Course ... I'm teaching a private variant this week in Cambridge with some extra topics such as a little bit of socket programming ... see the next post ...
(written 2008-12-02, updated 2008-12-10)

Associated topics are indexed under

P208 - Perl - Lists
  [3939] Lots of ways of doing the same thing in Perl - list iteration - (2012-12-03)
  [3906] Taking the lead, not the dog, for a walk. - (2012-10-28)
  [3870] Writing more maintainable Perl - naming fields from your data records - (2012-09-25)
  [3669] Stepping through a list (or an array) in reverse order - (2012-03-23)
  [3548] Dark mornings, dog update, and Python and Lua courses before Christmas - (2011-12-10)
  [3400] $ is atomic and % and @ are molecular - Perl - (2011-08-20)
  [2996] Copying - duplicating data, or just adding a name? Perl and Python compared - (2010-10-12)
  [2833] Fresh Perl Teaching Examples - part 2 of 3 - (2010-06-27)
  [2813] Iterating over a Perl list and changing all items - (2010-06-15)
  [2484] Finding text and what surrounds it - contextual grep - (2009-10-30)
  [2295] The dog is not in trouble - (2009-07-17)
  [2226] Revision / Summary of lists - Perl - (2009-06-10)
  [2067] Perl - lists do so much more than arrays - (2009-03-05)
  [1918] Perl Socket Programming Examples - (2008-12-02)
  [1828] Perl - map to process every member of a list (array) - (2008-10-09)
  [1703] Perl ... adding to a list - end, middle, start - (2008-07-09)
  [1316] Filtering and altering Perl lists with grep and map - (2007-08-23)
  [1304] Last elements in a Perl or Python list - (2007-08-16)
  [968] Perl - a list or a hash? - (2006-12-06)
  [928] C++ and Perl - why did they do it THAT way? - (2006-11-16)
  [773] Breaking bread - (2006-06-22)
  [762] Huge data files - what happened earlier? - (2006-06-15)
  [622] Queues and barrel rolls in Perl - (2006-02-24)
  [560] The fencepost problem - (2006-01-10)
  [463] Splitting the difference - (2005-10-13)
  [355] Context in Perl - (2005-06-22)
  [240] Conventional restraints removed - (2005-03-09)
  [230] Course sizes - beware of marketing statistics - (2005-02-27)
  [140] Comparison Chart for Perl programmers - list functions - (2004-12-04)
  [28] Perl for breakfast - (2004-08-25)

P211 - Perl - Hashes
  [3662] Finding all the unique lines in a file, using Python or Perl - (2012-03-20)
  [3451] Why would you want to use a Perl hash? - (2011-09-20)
  [3106] Buckets - (2010-12-26)
  [3072] Finding elements common to many lists / arrays - (2010-11-26)
  [3042] Least Common Ancestor - what is it, and a Least Common Ancestor algorithm implemented in Perl - (2010-11-11)
  [2920] Sorting - naturally, or into a different order - (2010-08-14)
  [2915] Looking up a value by key - associative arrays / Hashes / Dictionaries - (2010-08-11)
  [2836] Perl - the duplicate key problem explained, and solutions offered - (2010-06-28)
  [1856] A few of my favourite things - (2008-10-26)
  [1826] Perl - Subs, Chop v Chomp, => v , - (2008-10-08)
  [1705] Environment variables in Perl / use Env - (2008-07-11)
  [1334] Stable sorting - Tcl, Perl and others - (2007-09-06)
  [930] -> , >= and => in Perl - (2006-11-18)
  [738] (Perl) Callbacks - what are they? - (2006-05-30)
  [386] What is a callback? - (2005-07-22)

5525

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Romeo and Julie
Progress Bar Techniques - Perl
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Out of memory during array extend - Perl
Why I remember East Grafton
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It must be nearly Christmas
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