(Sorry for the hype, I'm just testing catch words :-)
Technique to get references to selected elements of an ARRAY. Have you ever wanted to manipulate just a few elements of an array without undue copying? I came across this construct \($x,$y,$z) referenced in the DBI documentation, which yields three scalar references to each of the variables in parentheses and I thought, hmmmmmm, I wonder if you could apply this to an array, so I tried it and violin! worked.
Say your ripping through a file and splitting the lines on tabs. An you want to modify fields 3,5 & 7 (0 based of course) you can: 
($a,$b,$c) = \(@array[3,5,7]);

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after which you can do things like: 
$$a =~ s/^\s+//; # remove leading white space from $array[3]
$$b =~ s/\s+$//; # and trailing ws from $array[5]
$$c++; # incremnt $array[7]

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assigning to an array also works: 
@y = \(@array[2..4,9]);

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Maybe not hard to write, maybe a little obscure, but definitely very handy.

www.taxax.org

In reply to Free, explosive, fun, thrill-packed, exciting adventure by methodius

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