How to use join with AOA

How to use the Perl join function with an AOA (array of arrays)

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Perl join function is used to concatenate the elements of an array or a list into a string, using a separator given by a scalar variable value. For a simple array, I remind you the usual syntax form:

$string = join EXPR, LIST;

where:

EXPR may be any string and it represents a separator for the elements of the list or array
LIST represents a list or array whose elements will be merged into a string

If you have an array of arrays (@AOA), you can use some additional syntax forms for the join function.

I’ll illustrate this by giving you a few examples.

Join into a string the elements of a particular sub-array

To join into a string the elements of a sub-array, you can use the following syntax form:

$string = join EXPR, @ { $AOA [ $index ] };

where $index is the index or subscript of the given sub-array.

$AOA[$index] is a reference to a sub-array, so you need to dereference it by putting a @ sign in front of the reference; to avoid any ambiguity or operators precedence rule, the reference is enclosed by braces.

Here is an example:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @AOA = ( 
  [ 'a1', 'b1', 1 ],
  [ 'a2', 'b2', 2 ],
  [ 'a3', 'b3', 3 ],
  [ 'a4', 'b4', 4 ],
); 

my $index = 1;    # the second sub-array

my $str = join ',', @ { $AOA [ $index ]} ;

print "$str\n"; 
# it prints: a2,b2,2

The [] is the array constructor and returns a reference to the list enclosed in the square brackets. To join the elements of the subarray, the comma character was used.

Join the elements of a particular column of a matrix into a string

If you have a matrix represented as an array of arrays, than you can extract the elements of a particular column and join them into a string, by using map and join:

$str = join EXPR, map $_->[$index], @AOA;

where $index is the index of the matrix column.

@AOA contains array references, the map function will extract for each reference assigned to $_ the corresponding element of the $index column; for dereferencing the -> operator was used because is more easier to read (if you prefer you can use also the notation $$_[$index]). The join function will join the elements of the list returned by map into a string, separating them by EXPR.

Here is an example:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @AOA = ( 
  [ 'a1', 'b1', 1 ],
  [ 'a2', 'b2', 2 ],
  [ 'a3', 'b3', 3 ],
  [ 'a4', 'b4', 4 ],
); 

my $index = 1;   # the second column of the matrix

$str = join ',', map $_->[$index], @AOA;

print "$str\n"; 
# it prints: b1,b2,b3,b4

As you can see from the output, the $str variable contains the elements of the matrix second column, separated by comma.

Turn each subarray into a string and get an array with all these strings

If you have an array of arrays, you can use foreach to iterate through its array references and for each sub-array you can join its elements into a string using an EXPR separator and next append this string into an array using the push function.

You can use either an explicit foreach loop with a block or the short form of foreach as a modifier.

See below the syntax forms in both cases:

foreach my $item (@AOA) {
  push @array, join EXPR, @{$item};
}

# or

push @array, join EXPR, @$_ foreach (@AOA);

$item is a reference to an array and because the second argument of the join function is a list or an array, you need to dereference it by using the @{$item} notation.

To be more explicit, let’s look at an example:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @AOA = ( 
  [ 'a1', 'b1', 1 ],
  [ 'a2', 'b2', 2 ],
  [ 'a3', 'b3', 3 ],
  [ 'a4', 'b4', 4 ],
); 

my @array = ();
push @array, join ',', @$_ foreach (@AOA);

print "$_\n" foreach @array;

I used the same @AOA as in the examples presented above. I used the foreach loop to print the elements of the resulting array, each element on a new line.

The output is as follows:

a1,b1,1
a2,b2,2
a3,b3,3
a4,b4,4

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