Re^3: array looping with foreach

I wonder if we don't occasionally try to be too Perlish just because this is NOT C.

I thought that was the point! We try to be Perlish because this isn't language X. Perhaps our definitions of "Perlish" differ.

Familiarity is not a good argument as not everyone comes from C. I suspect people who came from say a lisp or python background would not immediately recognize a C style for loop.

I will admit it is likely the most efficient, but, for me, that time is lost in correcting all my stupid off by one errors.

Comment on Re^3: array looping with foreach

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Re^4: array looping with foreach by mrpeabody (Friar) on Jan 19, 2008 at 04:10 UTC
I thought that was the point! We try to be Perlish because this isn't language X. Perhaps our definitions of "Perlish" differ. There really is no truly Perlish idiom for this situation. The idiom in OP's second example has some benefits: it's simple, doesn't require any extra modules, is hard to screw up, and lets you safely insert or delete from your array. But -- playing language designer for a moment -- could it be better? `for my $i (0..$#array) { my $el = $array[$i]; ... };` [download] Hmm, too much repetition. Perhaps: `over (@array) as ($el; $i) { ... };` [download] The array element and the index are implicitly localized to the loop, and the index is optional. If you want to iterate n-at-a-time you can do: `over (@array) as ($el_a, $el_b; $i, $j) { ... };` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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Re^4: array looping with foreach
by mrpeabody (Friar) on Jan 19, 2008 at 04:10 UTC

I thought that was the point! We try to be Perlish because this isn't language X. Perhaps our definitions of "Perlish" differ.

There really is no truly Perlish idiom for this situation. The idiom in OP's second example has some benefits: it's simple, doesn't require any extra modules, is hard to screw up, and lets you safely insert or delete from your array.

But -- playing language designer for a moment -- could it be better?

for my $i (0..$#array) {
  my $el = $array[$i];
  ...
};
[download]

Hmm, too much repetition. Perhaps:

over (@array) as ($el; $i) {
  ...
};
[download]

The array element and the index are implicitly localized to the loop, and the index is optional. If you want to iterate n-at-a-time you can do:

over (@array) as ($el_a, $el_b; $i, $j) {
  ...
};
[download]

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]