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