As other have explained, it's a one element slice. Unfortunally, if you use it like this, Perl will issue a warning. I don't think it's right that Perl should give this warning; why should a one element slice trigger a warning when two, three, four, ..., or even a zero element slice don't? Furthermore, in most cases @foo 1 is used in rvalue context, where it won't matter anyway. The only place where it might go wrong, is where you use @foo 1 in lvalue context, and the RHS of the assignment returns different things in list and scalar context.

But that's a rare case. In a more common case, which more often goes wrong is my ($foo) vs my $foo. But Perl doesn't warn there.

And considering that in perl6, @foo 1 is the right way to address a single element (what's perl6 syntax for a one element slice?), I think that warning ought to removed from Perl.

I've once send that in as a wish to p5p, but it was ignored.

Abigail

In reply to Re: @array[1] is valid?? by Abigail-II
in thread @array[1] is valid?? by jdklueber

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