Printing array in scalar context

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

when I am writing code as follows, then "print @content ;" is printing all elements of array content.

open FILE, "C:/Users/Admin/Desktop/Books/read.txt" or die "Can't open 
+: $!\n";

@content = <FILE>;

print @content;

$last = pop(@content);

print "\n".$last. "\n";
[download]

Now when I am writing following code

open FILE, "C:/Users/Admin/Desktop/Books/read.txt" or die "Can't open 
+: $!\n";

@content = <FILE>;

print @content."\n\n";

$last = pop(@content);

print "\n".$last. "\n";
[download]

"print @content;" prints number of elements within array content (ie scalar context).

Why is that ? Why is printing in array context in first case and scalar context in second case ?

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Re: Printing array in scalar context by NetWallah (Canon) on Aug 08, 2011 at 05:21 UTC
The "." (Concatenation operator) imposes a scalar context. Some alternatives, to show the content of the array are: `print "@content\n\n"; # Array is interpolated print @content, "\n\n"; # Comma maintains array context imposed by "pr +int"` [download] "XML is like violence: if it doesn't solve your problem, use more."	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Printing array in scalar context by TomDLux (Vicar) on Aug 08, 2011 at 17:34 UTC
If you do put the whole thing in a double-quoted string, the `$"` separator would apply between array elements, introducting a space at the beginning of each line, other than the first. You would need to localize it to be an empty string, if you wanted to avoid additional characters. `{ local $" = q{}; print "@content\n\n"; }` [download] As Occam said: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.	[reply] [d/l] [select]