my $x = (localtime)[1];
print "$x\n";
print "".(localtime)[1],"\n";
print ((localtime)[1],"\n");
print STDOUT (localtime)[1],"\n";
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perl -E 'say +(localtime)[1]'
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($q=q:Sq=~/;[c](.)(.)/;chr(-||-|5+lengthSq)`"S|oS2"`map{chr |+ord
}map{substrSq`S_+|`|}3E|-|`7**2-3:)=~y+S|`+$1,++print+eval$q,q,a,
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I was surprised that this worked, but it did:

my @array = (32, "something","something01","01something");
print scalar @array."\n"; #prints 4
print +(@array)[0], "\n"; #prints 32
print +(@array)[1], "\n"; #prints something
print +(@array)[2], "\n"; #prints something01
print +(@array)[3], "\n"; #prints 01something
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An issue that I see is how Perl handles math on strings and potential confusion resulting from that:

my $test = '01xxx';
$test += 1;
print "01xxx + 1 is: $test\n"; #prints 2
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I do most of my work on Windows now and printing to the console in any form is such an incredibly "expensive" execution wise operation that I prefer the print "".function; option. The string concatenation is meaningless in the overall scheme of things.

I was going to mention that, but had forgotten by the time I had completed my post. I'm glad you've added it to the thread. Cheers, choroba!

perl -e 'use v5.10; say ((localtime)[1])'
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Note that you can bypass the whole use statement by using -E:

perl -E 'say ((localtime)[1])'
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Nice and thank you!


However, in one of the examples of intermediate perl there is a section in the package that don't use surrounding circular braces. Any idea why ?
See below code its working fine with out any braces surrounding the list, does it have to do anything with the return?

{
package MyDate;
use vars qw($AUTOLOAD);

use Carp;

my %Allowed_methods = qw( date 3 month 4 year 5 );
my @Offsets = qw(0 0 0 0 1 1900 0 0 0);

sub new { bless {}, $_[0] }
sub DESTROY {}

sub AUTOLOAD {
my $method = $AUTOLOAD;
$method =~ s/.*:://;
unless( exists $Allowed_methods{ $method } ) {
carp "Unknown method: $AUTOLOAD";
return;
}


my $slice_index = $Allowed_methods{ $method };

return (localtime)[$slice_index] + $Offsets[$slice_index];
}
}

MyDate->import; # we don't use it
my $date = MyDate->new();

print "The date is " . $date->date . "\n";
print "The month is " . $date->month . "\n";
print "The year is " . $date->year . "\n";
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This is because when using print or say, there is ambiguity in what you're passing. Without the parens:

perl -w -E 'say (localtime)[1]'
say (...) interpreted as function at -e line 1.
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say like print are both functions. perl just makes it convenient that you can omit a function's parens in most situations. say believes that the opening parens belongs to itself, like this: say( localtime )[1] ;, which is wrong. So if you look at it like this: say( (localtime)[1] );, it may become clearer as to what's happening. In most other cases, you can eliminate the parens:

my $x = (localtime)[1];
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or

return (localtime)[1];
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