Dear Monks, I have a simple for loop which use the < less than operator in the TEST condition. This works as expected for an assigned scalar, but when I assign the scalar thru a rand call the loop goes 1 iteration beyond the < less than condition to <=. Your wisdom is greatly appreciated. J

#!/usr/bin/perl
# use v5.10; 
 use warnings;
#use strict;
 
   $data_length = 5;

  printf "data length = %d\n",$data_length;
  for($k=0; $k <   $data_length; $k++)    # the includes up to $data_l
+ength - 1
     {
      printf "loop k = %d\n",$k;
     }# end for()

   $my_rand5 = rand(5);
   $data_length = 5 + $my_rand5;    

  printf "data length = %d\n",$data_length;
  for($k=0; $k <   $data_length; $k++)    # the test includes $k == $d
+ata_length
     {
      printf "loop k = %d\n",$k;
     }# end for()
[download]

 Results are as follows:
 mytest
data length = 5
loop k = 0
loop k = 1
loop k = 2
loop k = 3
loop k = 4          <- loop stops at N-1 
data length = 9
loop k = 0
loop k = 1
loop k = 2
loop k = 3
loop k = 4
loop k = 5
loop k = 6
loop k = 7
loop k = 8
loop k = 9         <- loop goes 1 iteration too far
[download]

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