Hello All:

Working my way through Learning Perl (the llama book), specifically the section Scalar and List Context.

Please consider the following:

my $x;
my @array;
@array = qw( a b c);

($x) =  qw( a b c);
print $x  . "\n";

$x =  qw( a b c);
print $x  . "\n";

[download]
Which produces:

C:\dev\learningPerl>perl ex3c.pl
a
c

[download]
In this assignment: ($x) = qw( a b c);

In my mind we have list to list. The list on the left only has one slot so the other two values are lost.

Can some please explain what is going on here:

$x = qw( a b c);

and why does "c" get assigned to $x

Many thanks for your kind assistance.

Best

KD

In reply to scalar vs list context by kevind0718

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.