that min functions looks kinda funny, and in some ways manages to expose the dangers of writing lazy (ie, terse) perl. 
sub min {
    my $min = shift;
    foreach (@_) {
        $_ = $min if $_ < $min;
    }
    return $min;
}

@a = (10, 5, 8, 2, 1, -4);
$min = min(@a);
print "min of @a is $min\n";

[download]
produces: min of 10 10 10 10 10 10 is 10

probably not what you expected! not only did it give the wrong answer, it destroyed the input list!

In reply to Re^2: I think Perl ruined me as a programmer by mreece
in thread I think Perl ruined me as a programmer by Petras

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