Returns a list consisting of all the values of the named hash, or the values of an array. (In a scalar context, returns the number of values.)
The values are returned in an apparently random order. The actual random order is subject to change in future versions of Perl, but it is guaranteed to be the same order as either the keys
or each
function would produce on the same (unmodified) hash. Since Perl 5.8.1 the ordering is different even between different runs of Perl for security reasons (see "Algorithmic Complexity Attacks" in perlsec).
As a side effect, calling values() resets the HASH or ARRAY's internal iterator, see "each". (In particular, calling values() in void context resets the iterator with no other overhead. Apart from resetting the iterator, values @array
in list context is the same as plain @array
. We recommend that you use void context keys @array
for this, but reasoned that it taking values @array
out would require more documentation than leaving it in.)
Note that the values are not copied, which means modifying them will modify the contents of the hash:
for (values %hash) { s/foo/bar/g } # modifies %hash values
for (@hash{keys %hash}) { s/foo/bar/g } # same
See also keys
, each
, and sort
.