[This post delves into the internals of Perls. Most won't find it useful, but some might find it interesting.]

I've used the following to process the contents of an array while emptying it:

f( splice(@a) )

Someone asked what @a, @a=() did on StackOverflow. Well, that's the what the title of their question was, but the actual question was a bit different. But I thought it might be an alternative to splice(@a), so I put it to the test.

$ perl -e' use strict; use warnings; use feature qw( say ); my @a = qw( a b c d ); say for @a, @a=(); say "--"; say for @a; ' Use of freed value in iteration at -e line 7.

That was a first for me! Anyone want to venture a guess as to why it does that?

Note that the problem is not specific to loops, contrary to what your research might initially lead you to believe.

$ perl -e' use strict; use warnings; use feature qw( say ); my @a = qw( a b c d ); my @b = ( @a, @a=() ); say for @b; say "--"; say for @a; ' Use of uninitialized value $_ in say at -e line 8. Use of uninitialized value $_ in say at -e line 8. Use of uninitialized value $_ in say at -e line 8. Use of uninitialized value $_ in say at -e line 8. --

Hint: The following avoids the problem:

$ perl -e' use strict; use warnings; use feature qw( say ); my @a = qw( a b c d ); my $r = sub{ \@_ }->(@a); say for @a, @a=(); say "--"; say for @a; ' a b c d --

I'll post the answer.


In reply to Use of freed value by ikegami

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