in reply to RE: Re: Can perl do...?
in thread Can perl do...?

That doesn't do anything at all; you're introducing a value into a null context. That is, your statement has no effect whatsoever since there are no side effects. For instance, try the one-liner perl -we "$_;"Using the -w flag will let you know when your statements aren't doing anything.

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RE: RE: RE: Re: Can perl do...?
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jun 07, 2000 at 02:12 UTC
    It does one thing nashdj alluded to. As the last statement in a block, the resultant value of the block is the value in the variable.

    For example, in the Everything source they'll occasionally have a subroutine that does something like: 

    sub do_thisorthat {
    my ($text, $op) = shift;
    my $code = get_op($op);
    $code->$text;

    # manipulate text
    $text;
}

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RE: RE: RE: Re: Can perl do...?
by nashdj (Friar) on Jun 06, 2000 at 14:01 UTC
    Ok, so if it does nothing, then why not in a future perl release allow that to assign the value to $_. Sure it might sound completely useless, but if it already is useless. I would find something like that very handy. As for making sense, it seems to do that too..
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