Fellow monks,

While under the influence of boredom, I wrote the following script: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

print "What is your insult? ";
chomp(my $input = <>);

my @matching = qw/disk duck deck/;

if ($input eq $matching[0..2]) {die "bastard\n"};

[download]

But, when I enter an "insult", the following error occurs: 

Argument "" isn't numeric in array element at ./b line 10, <> line 1.

[download]

However, when I use a specific scalar reference to an array like so: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

print "What is your insult? ";
chomp(my $input = <>);

my @matching = qw/disk duck deck/;

if ($input eq $matching[0]) {die "bastard\n"};

[download]

I get no such error; but that's hardly a solution.
I didn't think there was a different range operator (than ..) for Strings; but perhaps I'm wrong.
... Or perhaps it's something else?

Thank you for your help - dusk

In reply to Why does this happen? by dusk

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.