Perl | Data Types

Difficulty Level : Medium
Last Updated : 12 Feb, 2019

Data types specify the type of data that a valid Perl variable can hold. Perl is a loosely typed language. There is no need to specify a type for the data while using in the Perl program. The Perl interpreter will choose the type based on the context of the data itself.

There are 3 data types in Perl as follows:

Scalars
Arrays
Hashes(Associative Arrays)

1. Scalars: It is a single unit of data which can be an integer number, floating point, a character, a string, a paragraph, or an entire web page. To know more about scalars please refer to Scalars in Perl.

Example:

# Perl Program to demonstrate the  
# Scalars data types 
  
# An integer assignment 
$age = 1;              
  
# A string  
$name = "ABC"; 
  
# A floating point    
$salary = 21.5;      
  
# displaying result 
print "Age = $age\n"; 
print "Name = $name\n"; 
print "Salary = $salary\n"; 

Output:

Age = 1
Name = ABC
Salary = 21.5

Scalar Operations: There are many operations which can be performed on the scalar data types like addition, subtraction, multiplication etc.

Example:

# Perl Program to demonstrate  
# the Scalars operations 
  
#!/usr/bin/perl 
  
# Concatenates strings 
$str = "GFG" . " is the best"; 
  
# adds two numbers      
$num = 1 + 0;  
  
# multiplies two numbers              
$mul = 4 * 9;  
  
# concatenates string and number              
$mix = $str . $num;              
  
# displaying result 
print "str = $str\n"; 
print "num = $num\n"; 
print "mul = $mul\n"; 
print "mix = $mix\n"; 

Output:

str = GFG is the best
num = 1
mul = 36
mix = GFG is the best1

2. Arrays: An array is a variable that stores the value of the same data type in the form of a list. To declare an array in Perl, we use ‘@’ sign in front of the variable name.

@age=(10, 20, 30)

It will create an array of integers which contains the value 10, 20 and 30. To access a single element of an array, we use the ‘$’ sign.

$age[0]

It will produce the output as 10. To know more about arrays please refer to Arrays in Perl

Example:

# Perl Program to demonstrate  
# the Arrays data type 
  
#!/usr/bin/perl 
  
# creation of arrays 
@ages = (33, 31, 27);              
@names = ("Geeks", "for", "Geeks"); 
  
# displaying result 
print "\$ages[0] = $ages[0]\n"; 
print "\$ages[1] = $ages[1]\n"; 
print "\$ages[2] = $ages[2]\n"; 
print "\$names[0] = $names[0]\n"; 
print "\$names[1] = $names[1]\n"; 
print "\$names[2] = $names[2]\n"; 

Output:

$ages[0] = 33
$ages[1] = 31
$ages[2] = 27
$names[0] = Geeks
$names[1] = for
$names[2] = Geeks

3. Hashes(Associative Arrays): It is a set of key-value pair. It is also termed as the Associative Arrays. To declare a hash in Perl, we use the ‘%’ sign. To access the particular value, we use the ‘$’ symbol which is followed by the key in braces.

Example:

# Perl Program to demonstrate the 
# Hashes data type 
  
# Hashes 
%data = ('GFG', 7, 'for', 4, 'Geeks', 11); 
  
#displaying result 
print "\$data{'CR'} = $data{'CR'}\n"; 
print "\$data{'Ramos'} = $data{'Ramos'}\n"; 
print "\$data{'Bale'} = $data{'Bale'}\n"; 

Output:

$data{'GFG'} = 11
$data{'for'} = 4
$data{'Geeks'} = 11

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