tr/// on a list

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

Monksters!

I'd like to do an operation like tr/// on all elements of a list.

  my @beatles = ('John', 'Paul', 'George', 'Ringo');
  @beatles =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;  # <--- doesn't work !!!
[download]

I think I'm hung up because tr/// returns the number of matches.
I could use a foreach, but it seems not terribly perlish.

Thanks for your help!

Comment on tr/// on a list Download Code

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Re: tr/// on a list by grinder (Bishop) on Sep 14, 2007 at 21:38 UTC
it seems not terribly perlish. Well actually, a foreach is actually quite perlish. To be terribly perlish, one would shorten it down to a `for` modifier that operates on `$_` implicitly aliasing over each element `for (@beatles) { tr /A-Z/a-z/ }` [download] written more concisely as `tr /A-Z/a-z/ for @beatles;` [download] which is probably more elegant than a vulgar map. `@beatles = map {lc} @beatles;` [download] update: gah! I do ramble on. • another intruder with the mooring in the heart of the Perl	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: tr/// on a list by GrandFather (Saint) on Sep 14, 2007 at 22:37 UTC
Because map operates on an alias of each element you don't need to assign the result of the map anywhere: `map {$_= lc} @beatles;` [download] However map in a void context is frowned on so it would be more usual to use for/foreach as a statement modifier: `$_ = lc for @beatles;` [download] DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: tr/// on a list by ikegami (Patriarch) on Sep 14, 2007 at 21:01 UTC
`tr/A-Z/a-z/ for @beatles;` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: tr/// on a list by shoness (Friar) on Sep 14, 2007 at 23:04 UTC
Thanks! I knew elegance was just a few deleted characters away. Those inside-out/backward for-loops and if-statements are terribly perlish, hence I rarely consider them when they're needed!	[reply]