To round off, just a quick comment on 'join' that may clarify things. As zengargoyle says, you don't need to worry about the efficiency of built-ins - if a language has a command, it's usually worth using it, rather than 'rolling your own'.

In the example you give though, if "$x='4:6:8'" is exactly what you want to end up with, then by all means, type it out in full. In most real-life situations though, that list of numbers is likely to come from somewhere else - my $x = join(":",@list_of_user_supplied_data" or something.

Also, from a readability point of view, seeing a 'join(":")' followed later by a 'split(":")' makes your intention more obvious.

Hope this helps.

In reply to Re: Learning Perl 3 questions (misc) by benn
in thread Learning Perl 3 questions (misc) by sulfericacid

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.