in reply to aliasing

To add to what others already mentioned--according to perldata, these two statements are exactly equivalent:

@a[0,2,4] = (0 .. 2);
($a[0], $a[2], $a[4]) = (0 .. 2);

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So the slice is modifying the elements directly, but the assignment to a plain array clobbers that array.

Update: Spelling error fixed. Thanks cLive ;-).

----
I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

: () { :|:& };:

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom