Re: Quick easy question: What does $i mean?

Well, yes, that is a quick and easy question. I don't think there is a quick and easy answer because that depends on what you actually want to know and you've not given enough context for us to tell. Here are a couple of answers to get you started:

It is a scalar variable which may be used to store a number or a string or a reference to something
In a context like this for (my $i = 0; $i < $limit; ++$i) is is a counter or, more likely, an index in a C'ish for loop. There are probably better ways to do this.

Perl is Huffman encoded by design.

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Re^2: Quick easy question: What does $i mean? by kwaping (Priest) on Sep 23, 2005 at 21:07 UTC
I'm curious about the second bullet item in your reply. Is this the "better way" you were thinking of? `for (0 .. $limit) { #... }` [download] What's wrong with the C-ish `for` loop? I'm always looking for a better mousetrap!	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Quick easy question: What does $i mean? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Sep 23, 2005 at 21:29 UTC
What's wrong with the C-ish for loop? It's harder to read. The index variable appears three times, and the upper bound is expressed as a logical expression, yet we think of the bound as a number. With a Perl-ish for loop, the index variable only appears once, and the bounds are expressed as numbers, just like in our mind. To support my case, let me point out you made an error reading the bounds of the C-ish version: `for (0 .. $limit-1) { #... } ^^ was missing` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Quick easy question: What does $i mean? by kwaping (Priest) on Sep 23, 2005 at 23:13 UTC
... Assuming that $limit wasn't already defined as "whatever - 1". You're thinking of $limit strictly in terms of "scalar @array", which was not what I was thinking when I wrote that little snippet. :)	[reply]
Re^5: Quick easy question: What does $i mean? by ikegami (Patriarch) on Sep 23, 2005 at 23:20 UTC
Re^3: Quick easy question: What does $i mean? by davidrw (Prior) on Sep 23, 2005 at 21:17 UTC
cause we like the perl-ish way better :) But i think the point is that in perl, the array (assuming that's the context) indices themselves aren't needed. For example, `for (my $i = 0; $i < $#array + 1; ++$i){ print $array[$i] . "\n"; }` [download] Is "better" written: `foreach my $s ( @array ){ print "$s\n"; } # OR one of many other ways like: print $_."\n" for @array;` [download] Of course, if the output needs the array index in it, that changes things...	[reply] [d/l] [select]