How do I access the hash represented by this dumper output?

Question

I am hacking a git-svn Perl script. I have a $paths variable which I think contains an array of individual paths, but I am having a hard time iterating over it. My end goal is to to add an additional attribute to one path.

Here is the dumper output.

{
    "/dira" => {
        action        => "A",
        copyfrom_path => undef,
        copyfrom_rev  => -1
    },
    "/dira/dirb" => {
        action        => "A",
        copyfrom_path => undef,
        copyfrom_rev  => -1
    },
    "/dira/dirb/test.55mb.file" => {
        action        => "A",
        copyfrom_path => undef,
        copyfrom_rev  => -1
    },
}

Answer 1

According to that output, $paths is a reference to a hash of references to hashes.

If you know which path you want to extend, you don't need to iterate:

$paths->{'/foo/bar'}{'my_attribute'} = 42;

If you want to do this uniformly to all paths, you can do this:

for my $attrs (values %$paths) {
    $attrs->{'my_attribute'} = 42;
}

See perldoc perldata for information about hashes and perldoc perlreftut for references and nested data structures.