yeah, if only there were a construct in perl that could *test* for conditions, and if only there were some way of giving some piece of information a name, putting that information in a holder of some sort, and to refer to that information by that name, and maybe even manipulating the information. In fact, wouldn't it be great if you could tell perl
For every value you have
1. IF the current value is greater than the biggest one you've seen so
+ far,
THEN it's the new biggest one you've seen.
2. IF the current value is lower than the lowest value you've seen,
THEN it's the new lowest one you've seen
?
And if only it were the case that at the end of such a process, "the biggest value you've seen so far" would have to be the biggest value in the collection, and similarly for the lowest value you'd seen. But them's the breaks, as they ... well, nobody I know ... say.
perl -e 'print "How sweet does a rose smell? "; chomp ($n = <STDIN>);
+$rose = "smells sweet to degree $n"; *other_name = *rose; print "$oth
+er_name\n"'