_____________________________________________________
Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;

In addition to japhy's excellent answer, I'd like to just point out what this is doing for anyone who might not quite understand why this works as it does.

(my_func()) forces the output of this function into list context as well as groups it for the [5] we're about to append. Now that [5] takes a slice of the list.

Here's a simple example

sub foo { return qw(a b c d) }
( foo() )[1,3];

# Is the same as:
('a', 'b', 'c', 'd')[1,3];

# And effectively the same as
@a = foo();
@a[1,3];
[download]

You can read more about slicing in the book Effective Perl Programming (a *must* read =)

sub
MyFunc
{
   my @ary = qw(a b c d e f g h i j);
   return \@ary;
}

my $foo = ${MyFunc()}[4];
[download]

Nothing wrong with the above. But I prefer:

my $foo = (MyFunc())->[4];
[download]

/prakash

Above and beyond the exelent answers above, I'd just like to note that in newer perls, that works exactly as you wrote it -- it's special-cased in the source. I think the change is as of 5.6, but I can't seem to find it in the perldelta* manpages.

Thanks,
James Mastros,
Just Another Perl Scribe

$elem = (myFunc())[5];
[download]

$elem = (myFunc())[4]; #fifth element 
$elem = (myFunc())[5]; #sixth element
[download]

$elem = (myFunc())[5];
[download]

$day = (localtime)[6];
[download]