Re: shift doesn't DWIM

There are enough times when one just wants to get rid of the first element in an array, via:

shift @array;
[download]

It would be a nuisance to have to create a spitoon-like variable just to catch the shift'ed element (thereby preserving $_). And it would be easy to forget to do this, leading to many chomped butts.

the lowliest monk

Comment on Re: shift doesn't DWIM Download Code

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Re^2: shift doesn't DWIM by japhy (Canon) on Jul 12, 2005 at 12:27 UTC
I agree entirely. From a Huffman-encoding viewpoint, I'd say doing `shift @a` to discard the first element of the array and doing `$_ = shift @a` to put that discarded element in $_ is a far better allocation of characters than `() = shift @a` for discarding and `shift @a` for storing in $_. Not to mention those empty LHS parens look odd to some folks. Jeff `japhy` Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and `perl` hacker How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: shift doesn't DWIM by GrandFather (Saint) on Jul 12, 2005 at 20:25 UTC
Very nice reply! With a rationale like that prodding my brain maybe I won't fall into this particular hole that I've invented for myself again. Perl is Huffman encoded by design.	[reply]
Re^2: shift doesn't DWIM by Fletch (Bishop) on Jul 12, 2005 at 12:22 UTC
Not to mention it's analogous to the behavior of `shift` in shell scripts which is often used in this way (just a bare `shift` to toss the value in `$1` after retrieving it previously; especially in `getopt`-ish code). -- We're looking for people in ATL	[reply] [d/l]