I'm just going to link to this node of mine that I think explains how all of these operators work.

In reality, I never use shift or unshift; I use push lots, and pop only occasionally. The only time I see shift used is at the top of a sub (my $foo = shift), and that's a code pattern that I dislike. I much prefer the pattern 

  my ( $this, $that, $other ) = @_;

[download]
over three successive shift statements. Just about any time you're doing a cut and paste in your code, alarm bells should be going off that ask -- "Is this really the correct thing to be doing?"

Alex / talexb / Toronto

Thanks PJ. We owe you so much. Groklaw -- RIP -- 2003 to 2013.

In reply to Re: I am confused by a "Learning Perl" sample showing "unshift" by talexb
in thread I am confused by a "Learning Perl" sample showing "unshift" by KenAndrews

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