I probably would have this in 5.8:

$ cat sentinel_58.pl
#!perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @in = qw{start middle end};
my $i = 0;
print map {
    join($_, ($i++ == $#in ? q{<li class="last">} : q{<li>}), q{</li>}
+);
} @in;

$ sentinel_58.pl
<li>start</li><li>middle</li><li class="last">end</li>

[download]

And here's much the same offering for newer Perl versions:

$ cat sentinel_512.pl
#!perl

use 5.12.0;
use warnings;

my @in = qw{start middle end};
say map {
    state $i = 0;
    join($_, ($i++ == $#in ? q{<li class="last">} : q{<li>}), q{</li>}
+);
} @in;

$ sentinel_512.pl
<li>start</li><li>middle</li><li class="last">end</li>

[download]

-- Ken

In reply to Re: Variant of map for special-casing the last item by kcott
in thread Variant of map for special-casing the last item by jdporter

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