NAME

exists - test whether a hash key is present

SYNOPSIS

exists EXPR

DESCRIPTION

Returns TRUE if the specified hash key exists in its hash array, even if the corresponding value is undefined.

    print "Exists\n" if exists $array{$key};
    print "Defined\n" if defined $array{$key};
    print "True\n" if $array{$key};

A hash element can be TRUE only if it's defined, and defined if it exists, but the reverse doesn't necessarily hold true.

Note that the EXPR can be arbitrarily complicated as long as the final operation is a hash key lookup:

    if (exists $ref->{"A"}{"B"}{$key}) { ... }

Although the last element will not spring into existence just because its existence was tested, intervening ones will. Thus $ref->{"A"} $ref->{"B"} will spring into existence due to the existence test for a $key element. This autovivification may be fixed in a later release.

DISCLAIMER

We are painfully aware that these documents may contain incorrect links and misformatted HTML. Such bugs lie in the automatic translation process that automatically created the hundreds and hundreds of separate documents that you find here. Please do not report link or formatting bugs, because we cannot fix per-document problems. The only bug reports that will help us are those that supply working patches to the installhtml or pod2html programs, or to the Pod::HTML module itself, for which I and the entire Perl community will shower you with thanks and praises.

If rather than formatting bugs, you encounter substantive content errors in these documents, such as mistakes in the explanations or code, please use the perlbug utility included with the Perl distribution.

--Tom Christiansen, Perl Documentation Compiler and Editor

Return to the Perl Documentation Index.
Return to the Perl Home Page.