By now you have the help you were looking for, but it may help a little to understand why Perl works like that. Larry Wall designed parts of Perl with the idea that different things should look different. That is a reason why Perl uses $, @ and % in front of variables and things. Things that have $ in front act like scalar values (numbers, strings and stuff like that). Things that have @ in front act like arrays or lists of things (don't get hung up about the difference at this point though). Things that have % in front act like hashes (those are really important to understand in Perl, but cause a lot of initial grief for beginners).
Arrays and hashes are both indexed variables - they hold lots of stuff and you need an index to select the particular element you are interested in. Arrays are indexed using numbers starting from 0 using syntax that looks like: $array[$index]. The $ out the front tells you that you are getting a scalar value. The [$index] bit selects the element 'indexed' by the numeric value in $index.
Hashes are indexed by strings. Accessing an element of a hash looks like: $hash{$index}. Still the $ out front to tell use we are getting a scalar value, but now we use curly brackets instead of square brackets and now $index contains any string we care to use.
Of course there is a whole lot more to it than that which you will learn along the way. Just remember that in general Perl tries to make things that are different look different.
In reply to Re: simple array question
by GrandFather
in thread simple array question
by tw
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