I figured it out! The range operator stuff freaked me out a little, but the big trick is that

foreach my $a (1 .. 5) {
    next while ($a != 2);
}
[download]

won't go to the while it's next to, but the outer foreach loop. Thus, you don't enter an infinite loop.

A curious thing was that I wrote the quick program:

my @strings = ('a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f');
while (my $s = shift @strings) {
    print "Looking at $s\n";
    next while ($s =~ /a/ .. $s =~ /c/);
    print "$s is OK!\n";
}
[download]

How does the range-op-boolean know that $s was a in a previous check. It seems to be maintaining state between invocations.

Update:

my @strings = ('a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f');
while (my $s = shift @strings) {
    print "Looking at $s\n";
    my $value = $s =~ /a/ .. $s =~ /c/;
    print "The value is $value\n";
    next if $value;
    print "$s is OK!\n";
}
[download]

This gives a very interesting output.

Looking at a
The value is 1
Looking at b
The value is 2
Looking at c
The value is 3E0
Looking at d
The value is
d is OK!
Looking at e
The value is
e is OK!
Looking at f
The value is
f is OK!
[download]

I just find that '3E0' thing really odd...

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.