Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!src.honeywell.com!msi.umn.edu!cs.umn.edu!cybrspc!roy
From: roy%cybrspc@cs.umn.edu (Roy M. Silvernail)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: $# question
Message-ID: <69oys1w163w@cybrspc>
Date: 21 Nov 90 01:13:28 GMT
References: <108982@convex.convex.com>
Organization: Villa CyberSpace, Minneapolis, MN
Lines: 41

tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:

> It's also wrong -- you're using @ for $, which is a no-no, and tended
> to coredump earlier version of perl.

And I learn Yet Another Perl of Wisdom... ;-) I'm going to learn this
language yet!

> In <8225@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> Larry wrote: (yes, I do collect these.)
>
>     Whenever you see subscripts in a Perl script, it's a pretty strong
>     indication that things aren't being done the Perl Way.

Just to cover all bases, then... is there a preferred Perl Way to access
the last element in an array, besides $foo[$#foo]?

> A cheaper way way to do this in perl would be
>
>     while(<INSTREAM>) {
>       push(@a, $_);
>     }
>
> This runs in 70% the time of the previous example on my machine.
>
> This is nearly as fast as
>
>     @a = <INSTREAM>;
>
> Which runs in 65% of the original time. Of course, you may not
> want to do this on small-memory machines and/or big files.

My application reads <INSTREAM>, processes each line separately, and (if
the line qualifies) appends to an array. Thus, the push() call is just
what I needed.

Thanks, Tom, for your guidance. Until 'The Book' comes out, this
newsgroup is my greatest asset in learning Perl.
--
Roy M. Silvernail |+|  roy%cybrspc@cs.umn.edu  |+| #define opinions ALL_MINE;
main(){float x=1;x=x/50;printf("It's only $%.2f, but it's my $%.2f!\n",x,x);}
"This is cyberspace." -- Peter da Silva  :--:  "...and I like it here!" -- me