> -----Original Message----- > From: Wiggins d'Anconia [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2005 8:55 AM > To: Marcos Rebelo > Cc: Perl Beginners > Subject: Re: Simplify perl -e '$a = [1,2,3,4,7]; print $a->[EMAIL PROTECTED]' > > > Marcos Rebelo wrote: > > This is correctly printing '7' but '$a->[EMAIL PROTECTED]' seems to be > > encripted code. > > > > Can I write this in a cleaner way? > > > > > > $a->[-1]; ??? > Hi Wiggins,
for those of us tryin' to keep up at home, can you walk us through that bit a little? Here's what I spot: $a = [1,2,3,4,7] # this is initializing a scalar, $a, with a reference to an array, [1,2,3,4,7] # $a-> this is dereferencing the array # as I understand it, and I really don't, the $#ARRAYNAME will give you the number of elements, minus one, of an array? # if that is the case, and then [EMAIL PROTECTED] ALSO derefernces the array, so then # [EMAIL PROTECTED] will be the number of elements in the array referenced by $a, minus one (or, '4', in this example) # so print $a->[EMAIL PROTECTED] # is equivelant to print $a->[4] # or, since [EMAIL PROTECTED] will always be the index of the last element of the array: print $a->[-1] Did I get it right? That looks like homework to me ... Why would you ever do that in a practical script? --Errin -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
