Hi Monks, I'm seeing wierd behavior in this snippet - and can't understand why.. 

use strict;
use warnings;

my @lines = qx!cat /etc/services!;
my @range = '1' .. $#lines;
my @blah;

push( @blah, $lines[ $#lines - splice( @range, int rand @range, 1 ) ] 
+)
  for @range;
print $#blah . $/;

[download]
Whatever number of elements @range contains, $#blah always contains half that number, minus 1.

Replacing the qx!cat .. ! with open and getting the file contents into an array doesn't change the behavior... Replacing the "int rand" with a plain number, or POSIX floor/ceil doesn't change the behavior..

Using a more standard 

for ( @range ) {
   push( @blah, $lines[ $#lines - splice( @range, int rand @range, 1 )
+ ] )
}

[download]
seems to have no effect either..

Can anyone see why this happens? (my /etc/services file has 9252 lines, same effect with other files)

Is it a bad idea to put code in between the brackets of $array[indices] ?

Many thanks for your insight!

In reply to possible wierdness from "for @array" by hsinclai

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