Oh enlightened ones, please share your wisdom on the following trivial topic:

use 5.14.0;
use warnings;

sub my_splice_like_func
{
    my ($list, @args) = @_;
    my @copy = @$list;
    return splice @copy, @args;         # this doesn't actually work :
+-(
}

$, = ' ';                               # just keepin' it pretty

my $list = [qw< one two three four >];
say my_splice_like_func($list, 2);      # want "three four"; get "two 
+three four"
say my_splice_like_func($list, 2, -1);  # want "three"; get "three fou
+r"

[download]

Now, I see what's actually happening: splice is forcing scalar context on @args, so all I'm really passing in is the number of args, which is obviously not what I want. So I see what's wrong, but I have no clue how to fix it. AFAIK there's no way to force list context (and Google seems to back me up on that). I suppose if this were Perl6 I could do something like *@args to flatten out the array, but in Perl5 I can't see any options other than something like:

    if (@args == 0)
    {   
        return @copy;
    }
    elsif (@args == 1)
    {   
        return splice @copy, $args[0];
    }
    elsif (@args == 2)
    {   
        return splice @copy, $args[0], $args[1];
    }
    else
    {   
        die("too many args");
    }
}

[download]

... which works, but damn, that's clumsy. (Other than checking for too many args, which the original version should have had, granted.)

Does anyone see a way that I've misssed? As always, I humbly await illumination from the collective consciousness.

In reply to Flattening out arguments to splice by Oberon

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