Jonathan has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

A pretty inane question from a pretty inane guy...
I wrote the following code today
# Sort list and remove first two elements
(undef,undef, my @sorted_tables) = sort { $a cmp $b } @table_list;

write REPORT_CSV while $table_name = shift @sorted_tables;

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Can anyone think of a more elegant approach? (preferably avoiding using the extra array @sorted_tables)

When I grow up I want to be a boy genius
My son Harry

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Inane question
by kilinrax (Deacon) on Nov 23, 2000 at 22:34 UTC
    Simply subscript the array returned by sort, thusly: 
    foreach $table_name ((sort { $a cmp $b } @table_list)[2..$#table_list]
+) {
  # do stuff
}

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[d/l]
Re: Inane question
by snax (Hermit) on Nov 23, 2000 at 22:52 UTC
    Well, unless you really need to remind yourself that you're sorting lexically, drop the sort sub -- lexical is the default sort: 
    #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my @data = (<DATA>);
print "Naked...\n\n";
for (sort @data) { print }
print "\nNow defined....\n";
for (sort {$a cmp $b} @data) { print }
exit;
__END__
1
3
 2
merlyn
4
10
birthday
12
 9

    [download]
    Of course that doesn't address the "elegance" issue of the two undef values, but you already have a good answer for that :)

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[d/l]

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