Thai Heng has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am a newbie to perl, and have no teacher. When reading the stonehenge article deep copy http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/col30.html, there are some code as follows: 
   while (@x = getpwent()) {
    $info{$x[0]} = \@x;
    print "$info{$x[0]}\n";
  }

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I can't understand the function getpWent(). This function can be called many times and how to transfer input argument to it, then get different output argumeng or return array? Who can give a simple example for this function or this question?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: [stonehenge] deep copy what's the function getpwent()
by GrandFather (Saint) on Nov 28, 2013 at 21:37 UTC

    getpwent (note that it is all lower case - Perl considers case important) is a built in Perl function. See the link for details.

    True laziness is hard work
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Re: [stonehenge] deep copy what's the function getpwent()
by hdb (Monsignor) on Nov 28, 2013 at 21:45 UTC

    Well, if you read the documentation, it says about getpwent:

    These routines are the same as their counterparts in the system C library.

    If this does not help, google it: getpwent, first find is http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/getpwent.3.html and says:

    The first time getpwent() is called, it returns the first entry; thereafter, it returns successive entries.

    This little piece of code shows what happens: 

    while(@x=getpwent()){
    print "@x\n";
}

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[d/l]
Re: [stonehenge] deep copy what's the function getpwent()
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 29, 2013 at 07:50 UTC
    They call those things iterators. An iterator is a function that returns items from a list until it runs out of them. When the list is exhausted, it returns a false value.

    In Perl, they're usually written using a closure: 

    sub make_iterator {
    my (@list) = @_;

    return sub {
        # return a false value if exhausted
        return unless @list;

        # return next item in list
        return shift @list;
    };
}

my $iter = make_iterator(1..5);

while ( my $val = $iter->() ) {
    print $val, "\n";
}

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[d/l]
      Oh, and each is an iterator too. 
      while (($key, $value) = each %hash) {
    print $key, "\n";
}

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                     After "each" has returned all entries from the hash or array,
               the next call to "each" returns the empty list in list context
               and "undef" in scalar context.  The next call following that
               one restarts iteration.
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[d/l]

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