in reply to Format a list with commas and "and"

I was always taught that the correct way of printing lists like that was "A, B, C and D" (i.e. no comma before the "and"). If your English teacher was like mine then this version will work better for you:

sub and_a_list {
  if (@_ > 2) {
    join(", ", @_[0..$#_-1]) . " and $_[-1]"
  } elsif (@_ > 1) {
    "$_[0] and $_[1]"
  } elsif (@_ > 0) {
    $_[0]
  } else {
    ""
  }
}

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--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

European Perl Conference - Sept 22/24 2000, ICA, London
<http://www.yapc.org/Europe/>

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: RE: Format a list with commas and
by tye (Sage) on Aug 24, 2000 at 19:03 UTC

    That particular lie was propogated by newspaper publishers who thought they could save millions by dropping all those "extra" commas. Leaving the last commas off makes for a lot more ambiguity. Unfortunately, many academics got convinced that if newspapers write that way it must be a good idea.

    My favorite breakfasts are bacon and eggs, blueberry muffins, and sausage and biscuits. Take one, two or three times daily.

            - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")
[reply]
      Thanks for that little bit of brain lint.
      I always "corrected" myself. I wondered why it never looked
      right to me.
[reply]
Re: Format a list with commas and
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Oct 02, 2002 at 10:46 UTC
    If you don't want that comma, you can do without the cases: 
    sub list {
    join ", " => @_ [0 .. $#_ - 2],
                 join " and " => @_ [grep {$_ >= 0} $#_ - 1, $#_]
}

    [download]

    Abigail

[reply]
[d/l]
      sub list {
    join(" and ", reverse grep defined && length, pop @_, join(", ", @
+_))
}

      [download]

      Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Cool Uses for Perl