$myvar = !defined $somevalue ? "default" : $somevalue;

or better yet

 $myvar = defined $somevalue ? $somevalue : "default";

This looks like exactly what I remembered. Thanks so much. If it's not too imposing, however, could you explain why/how this works? OTOH, I may be able to find info on "?" and ":" as operators in Programming Perl. :-)

You will find information about it in the Camel book... the "?" and ":" comprise a single operator called the "ternary" or "trinary" operator, so look for that in the index. You can also find information about it in perlop. Search for "Ternary".

-- Mike

--
just,my${.02}

Programming Perl 3rd Ed. Section 3.16 Conditional operator.

Or perlsyn Conditional operator.

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller

$myVar = $somevalue || 'default';
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Technically, it's not quite the same as the previous statements, but I'd say it is more commonly used than the trinary form.

There's whether something exists, whether it is defined (has a value different from undef), whether it has a "true" value (anything but undef or '' or 0 or '0'), and whether it's a reference or a non-referential scalar.

--
[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

Above example ought to be qualified w/ a statement similar to "To set a default value if $somevalue is false, use this ...".

I discovered that i need to set default iff a given value is undefined, not false. Thankfully, perl 6 will make it to take care of that just as easily -- search for "It's a setup" -- as the above example w/ help of // operator.

Change, May 30 2003: Removed "binary" from the last sentence describing the behaviour of //. The operator is listed being binary in the referenced portion ("It's a setup") of Exegesis 3, but as an unary operator at the end of the article.

$myVar = !defined($somevalue) ? "default" : $somevalue;
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$myVar=!defined($someValue)?"default":$someValue;
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#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $myvar;
my $val1;

$myvar = defined $val1 ? $val1 : "Blah";
print $myvar;
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