Re: Re: Re: where to look up "funny looking" perl notation (and an example)

Almost always true...

If it wasn't for the fact that you can change the base-index of perl arrays to something other then 0... But I've never seen anyone use that feature yet. The global parameter for the feature is '$['.

So use $# to get the last defined element index so you can safely add (or loop), and use scalar @array to find out how many elements there are in the array...

Comment on Re: Re: Re: where to look up "funny looking" perl notation (and an example)

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Re: Re: Re: Re: where to look up "funny looking" perl notation (and an example) by Mr. Muskrat (Canon) on Jan 21, 2003 at 20:52 UTC
Read perldoc perldata again! `Version 5 of Perl changed the semantics of $[: files that don't set the value of $[ no longer need to worry about whether another file changed its value. (In other words, use of $[ is deprecated.) So in general you can assume that scalar(@whatever) == $#whatever + 1;`	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: where to look up "funny looking" perl notation (and an example) by Gilimanjaro (Hermit) on Jan 21, 2003 at 20:57 UTC
Very true! But I still felt the history was relevant, as it sort of explains why the $# exists at all... And one could still use it, if one wanted to... (Notice the repetitive usage of the word 'one' in this context ;) )	[reply]
Re4: where to look up "funny looking" perl notation (and an example) by Hofmator (Curate) on Jan 22, 2003 at 13:22 UTC
For getting the 'last defined index' in an array - if you are using it as a subscript - I prefer `$array[-1] = $foo;` over `$array[$#array] = $foo;` $#array is still useful if you are looping over an array by index, like this `for my $i (0..$#array) { # do something with $array[$i] }` [download] -- Hofmator	[reply] [d/l] [select]