in reply to Re^3: how internally $#array is working in Perl
in thread how internally $#array is working in Perl

You're not even limited to positive numbers. 

$ perl -wle'$[ = -3; $_ = "abcdef"; print substr($_,0,1)'
Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated at -e line 1.
d

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You could get weird constructs that caused Perl to crash: 

$ perl -we'$[ = 3; $_ = "abc"; my $x = substr($_,2,1)'
panic: sv_setpvn called with negative strlen at -e line 1.

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I fixed it in 5.10.1 or 5.12.0 when fixing another bug: 

$ perl -we'$[ = 3; $_ = "abc"; my $x = substr($_,2,1)'
Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated at -e line 1.
substr outside of string at -e line 1.

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Keep in mind $[ is slated to be removed from Perl.

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Re^5: how internally $#array is working in Perl
by DrHyde (Prior) on Aug 16, 2010 at 09:51 UTC
    You're not even limited to positive numbers.
    yes, as I demonstrated with my example that used -9 :-)
    Keep in mind $[ is slated to be removed from Perl.
    has a2p been considered when making this change?
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[d/l]
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