pg writes: I don't think either side is really wrong, and it really depends on whether you look at it from a syntax point of view (my view) or an internal represent view.

Syntax is only useful insofar as it develops a data structure. Data structures are what enable algorithms. Following all of perl's "there is more than one way to phrase it" syntax eccentricities will just confuse you; conversely, recognizing perl's very few, very simple, very self-consistent data structures will let you accomplish many algorithms with few errors borne of such confusion.

• a scalar is O(1) in storage; undef, int, real, string, or reference;
  sometimes there are cached alternative representations but it's still O(1)
• an array contains a known number, zero or more, of scalars
• a hash associates zero or more pairs; each pair is a unique string key and an arbitrary scalar value
• (globs are public implementation details of the machine, skipped for this discussion)

Lists have no name and no known length. You can't take $#list or $list[-1] or even $list[3] without a conversion to array first. Lists are not a first-class storage data structure, but are the product of processing the syntax of literals, or the product of iteration.

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&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.