Perl array referencing reversing - arrays

Question

I am newbie to perl. And have been working with CSV files, JSON strings, arrays and hashes.
I have written this code, but it is giving me error. I want to use $header_copy in foreach loop.
1. my #headers=qw/January February March April May June/;
2. my $header_copy=\#headers;
3. print("$header_copy->[2]"); # Prints "March" Correctly
4. print("$header_copy[2]"); #Gives Error.
Error:
Global symbol "#header_copy" requires explicit package name at line 4
And I want to use $header_copy in for loop: like:
foreach $i ($header_copy){ **code..** }

Answer 1

You are taking the reference of #headers array using \#headers into $header_copy. So, before accessing it, you need to dereference it.
There are two ways(actually more than that) for it:
Using Arrow operator(->) - Most suitable for accesing a single item from arrayref
Using # { } - Suitable for iterating over arrayrefs .
$header_copy[2] will give error because you are accessing an element from arrayref without dereferencing it. The interpreter assumes it as an array #header_copy not an arrayref because the syntax says it.
Below program summarizes both approach:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
# define # headers
my #headers = qw/January February March April May June/;
# taken refrence of #headers array into $header_copy
my $header_copy = \#headers;
# dereferencing using arrow(->) operator
print $header_copy -> [2],"\n";
# derefrencing for iteration using #{...}
foreach(#{ $header_copy }) {
print $_,"\n";
}

Answer 2

The error 'Global symbol "..." requires explicit package name' is Perl-speak for "you're trying to use an undeclared variable". It even tells you the name of the undeclared variable - in this case it's #header_copy.
And if you look in your code, you'll see there's no declaration for an array called #header_copy. Oh, you have a scalar variable called $header_copy. And that contains a reference to an array (the array #headers). But that has no connection to an array called #header_copy.
So why does Perl think you want to use the array #header_copy? Well in the last line of your code, you use $header_copy[2] - which means "the third element in array #header_copy". And that generates an error because (as I've already pointed out) you don't have that array.
On the previous line you use $header_copy->[2]. And that works fine because ->[...] is the correct way to look up an element in an array that you have a reference to.
The important thing to realise is that $header_copy->[2] and $header_copy[2] mean two completely different things and refer to two completely different variables.
You also ask how you can get back to an array that you have a reference to (this is called "dereferencing"). That is simple. In general you use:
#{ expression that returns an array reference }
So, in your case, that would be:
#{ $header_copy }
But in cases where your expression is a scalar variable, you can simplify it by omitting the braces, so it becomes:
#$header_copy
So you want:
foreach my $i (#$header_copy) {
...
}

Answer 3

# reads data
my #headers=qw/January February March April May June/;
# use a foreach loop and store local copy of item nr in $headeritem_copy
foreach my $headeritem_copy (#headers) {
print("$headeritem_copy\n");
}

Answer 4

my #headers=qw/January February March April May June/;
my $header_copy=\#headers;
print("$header_copy->[2]"); # Prints "March" Correctly
De-reference the particular index
print("#{$header_copy}->[2]"); #Gives Error.