An observation:

Juerd was just arguing against this syntax here today. I don't know what he means by: "$#foo + 1 isn't necessarily equal to @foo"(Some Perl array nuance I am not familiar with) but I tend to agree with him that using the more direct syntax:

print "index of last element: $#A";
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is easier to understand and you don't have to leave future maintainers of your code guessing.

Thanks

I don't know what he means by: "$#foo + 1 isn't necessarily equal to @foo"(Some Perl array nuance I am not familiar with)

$[ = 5;
my @foo = qw(a b c);
printf "Number of elements: %d\n", scalar @foo;
printf "Last index: %d\n", $#foo;
printf "*Number of elements: %d\n", $#foo + 1;
printf "*Last index: %d\n", scalar @foo - 1;
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Number of elements: 3
Last index: 7
*Number of elements: 8
*Last index: 2
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One should of course NEVER set $[, but that is besides the point.

Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', plp_site => 'plp.juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap' }

Of course! Thanks for that answer Juerd! I'm willing to bet that "One should of course NEVER set $[" is exactly what the Camel book said too when I read about it so long ago.

Thanks for the refresher.

If foo is an empty, or undefined, array, then @foo is undef, but $#foo is -1.

In such a case, $#foo does equal scalar(@foo)-1, but scalar(@foo) does not equal $#foo+1.

--
Tommy
Too stupid to live.
Too stubborn to die.

No, I don't think so. If @foo is empty, then scalar(@foo) is zero, not undef, and the equality holds true... (actually undef == 0 is also true, though it emits a warning)

The only time @foo != $#foo + 1 is when you messed with $[ (but you didn't do that, did you?)

--
3dan