foreach() index scoping question

[Bradford Ritchie]

Hi,

I want to use a foreach loop to iterate over a list but I want to be able to
retain the index variable when the loop ends (either at the end of the list
or by an early-exit "last" statement).

Given the following example code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my %hash = ( "one" => {},    ## This part isn't important for this example
             "two" => {},
             "three" => {},
           );

## code to populate %hash subhashes goes here...

foreach my $elem (@long_list) {
    my $k="junk";
    foreach $k (keys %hash) {
       last if($elem =~ /$k/);        ## ok, I've got the $k I need
    }
    $hash{$k}->{'foo'} = 42;    ## oops, $k is reset to "junk"
}

I guess I need to assign $k to some other variable that will be visible
outside of the foreach loop before I call "last"...
but I want it to look nice too :)    and that's the problem.

    my $bar;
    foreach $k (keys %hash) {
        if($elem =~ /$k/) {
            $bar = $k;            ## can't I do better than this?
            last;
        }
    }

Ok, so it's not much of a problem but is there a way to get the nice feel of
the one-line "last if(..." and still do the assignment operation to retain
the value of $k?

Or, is there any way to get around the way foreach localizes the index
variable?

Thanks.
-- Brad


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