On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 12:02:38PM +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote: > "last" is not a function (a.k.a "subroutine") - it cannot be. > It is a special statement which is handled in a special way by > the Perl interpreter. "redo" and "next" are not functions > either for a similar reason.
I think we can all agree that last is not a function/subroutine,
but at the same time it does behave like one in several ways. :)
For example, you can follow it with parenthesis if you want
(albeit, there's no good reason to do that).
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
while(1) {
last();
}
__END__
Similarly, you can even wrap it up in a subroutine and it still
works as intended (so obviously it understands just how to find
the right enclosing block even through subroutine calls).
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
while(1) {
my_last;
}
sub my_last {
last;
}
__END__
Perl is just magic. ;) It's just one of those things. It's good
to understand that it's special and meant to be a control-flow
statement. The perldoc describes it as a "command".
Particularly surprising is that a stand-alone block is considered
the same "beast" as loops so last will affect that as well!
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
do {
{ last; }
print "This is reached!\n";
} while(0);
__END__
Personally I'm of the opinion too that unnecessary labels don't
really benefit the code any. They're certainly helpful to jump
several levels in a clean way. though I wouldn't oppose using a
goto for that in languages that lack labelled
next/last/continue/break statements. >:)
Regards,
--
Brandon McCaig <bamcc...@gmail.com> <bamcc...@castopulence.org>
Castopulence Software <https://www.castopulence.org/>
Blog <http://www.bamccaig.com/>
perl -E '$_=q{V zrna gur orfg jvgu jung V fnl. }.
q{Vg qbrfa'\''g nyjnlf fbhaq gung jnl.};
tr/A-Ma-mN-Zn-z/N-Zn-zA-Ma-m/;say'
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