Indeed, it is not a good idea to manipulate a stack unless you follow the specific interface that applies to a stack:

  1. A stack is like a stack of dishes in that you may only place items onto the top of the stack, and you may only pop items from the top of the stack.

  2. You must always check to see if the stack isEmpty() before attempting to pop.

  3. If desired, you may implement a sizeOf feature, and its purpose is to return the current number of items in the stack. (This count can be used to implement the isEmpty() function.)

In your code, I do not see any place where you check for the empty stack, so in another context (where it's not obvious that there are items on the stack), it would be a potential error to attempt to pop from a potentially empty stack.

While it is true that a "while loop" is would act in this capacity, you have used a "for loop", and should therefore check for empty prior to a pop.


Your wish is my commandline.

In reply to Re: using foreach by thezip
in thread using foreach by Anonymous Monk

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.