Access the key value from an associative array - arrays

Question

I have the associative array %cart_item, within this is a series of associative arrays. I need to access the value of the keys within %cart_item. I have the following code which iterates on each array key. (I do the equivalent of php's continue if the value is 'meta')
my $key_value;
for (keys %cart_item) {
next if (/^meta$/ || /^\s*$/);
}
I need to do something like this though (although this isn't valid), setting the value of the keys in the loop:
my $key_value;
for $i (keys %cart_item) {
next if (/^meta$/ || /^\s*$/);
$key_value = $i;
# do stuff
}
Could anyone suggest a solution here? Apologies if this is obvious, I'm a Perl newbie. Thanks

Answer 1

I think you are asking for
for my $key (keys %cart_item) {
next if $key =~ /^meta$/ || $key =~ /^\s*$/;
my $val = $cart_item{$key};
...
}

Answer 2

If you're just looking for the value that goes with the key, you can get both at the same time with each:
while (my ($key, $val) = each %cart_item) {
next if $key eq 'meta' || $key =~ /^\s*$/;
...
}
That's the equivalent of PHP's foreach ($cart_item as $key => $val).
I also changed the "meta" check to use simple string equality; no need to use a regular expression for an exact match.

Answer 3

Your original code has
for ( keys %cart_item ) {
next if (/^meta$/ || /^\s*$/);
}
which works fine because the for has no loop control variable so it defaults to Perl's "pronoun" it variable $_. In addition, your regex pattern matches have no object so they also default to $_
Written fully, this would be
for $_ ( keys %cart_item ) {
next if ( $_ =~ /^meta$/ || $+ =~ /^\s*$/);
}
but we don't have to write all of that. Some people hate it; others like me think it's absolute genius
Your non-working code
my $key_value;
for $i (keys %cart_item) {
next if (/^meta$/ || /^\s*$/);
$key_value = $i;
# do stuff
}
does use a loop control control variable $i (bad name for a hash key, by the way). That's all fine except that your regex matches still
my $key_value;
for $i (keys %cart_item) {
next if $i =~ /^meta$/ or $i =~ /^\s*$/;
$key_value = $i;
# do stuff
}
or, better still, stick with $_ and write this
for ( keys %cart_item ) {
next if /^meta$/ or /^\s*$/;
my $key_value = $_;
# do stuff
}