Re: Newbie help needed

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Another very useful tool is:

use Data::Dumper;
...
print Data::Dumper->Dump([$i->siblings()], ['siblings']);
This will dump out arbitrary objects in a formated structure so you can 
understand ho they are constructed. Then use that info to access the sub 
components of that structure.

-Steve

On 4/10/2014 9:51 AM, Brent J. Nordquist wrote:
You're correct, siblings is returning an array -- the question is, an
array of what? The answer is, an array of Gedcom::Individual objects --
in other words, $x in your loop is just like $i above, you can call the
name, surname, etc. methods on it.

Try this to see it:

     for $x (@array)            { print("Sibling (class ".ref($x).") = 
".$x->name."\n"); }

Whenever you see "HASH(0x2ab6c30)" or "ARRAY(0xdeadbeef)" in your print
output, that's telling you you're trying to print an object as if it was
a string. ref() is a simple way to find out what kind of object you
have, and Data::Dumper is a simple way to print the object out for
debugging purposes ... just note that the Gedcom classes create objects
that are pretty big (deeply nested).

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 09:30:25AM -0400, Alan Cohen wrote:
I am a Gedcom newbie (also an OO newbie) challenged to get a most basic
program using Gedcom.pm to work. Having opened a gedcom file, I can access
a Gedcom::Individual and can retrieve scalar attributes from him. However,
I fail when it comes to using methods that supposedly return an array.
Instead I get things like "Gedcom::Individual=HASH(0x123456789)"

Can someone please tell me where I'm going wrong in (say) the following
example?

#!/bin/perl -w

use warnings;
use strict;

use Gedcom;

my $ged = Gedcom->new(grammar_version => "5.5",
                       gedcom_file     => shift,
                       read_only       => 1);
my $indi="I187";
my $i;
my @array;
my $x;
     $i = $ged->get_individual($indi);
####
# These work...
####
     $x = $i->name;           { print("       name = $x\n"); }
     $x = $i->given_names;    { print("given_names = $x\n"); }
     $x = $i->surname;        { print("    surname = $x\n"); }
     $x = $i->get_value("birth date");{print(" birth date = $x\n"); }
####
# The documentation suggests that many methods return arrays but all of
# them seem to produce "values" such as
#     "Gedcom::Individual=HASH(0x2ab6c30)"
# (I looked at Individual.pm itself and "sub siblings" does seem to be
#  returning an array.
####                    WHAT AM I DOING WRONG!
     @array = $i->siblings();
     for $x (@array)            { print("Sibling $x\n"); }
Sincerely,
   Alan Cohen
   416-783-5383