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From: weisberg@hpcc01.HP.COM (Len Weisberg)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: I'm lazy, can this be done somehow???
Message-ID: <1180012@hpcc01.HP.COM>
Date: 31 Jan 91 19:25:03 GMT
References: <1991Jan26.012646.4937@sdd.hp.com>
Organization: HP Corp Computing & Services
Lines: 28

Brandon S. Allbery writes:
> |   DB<4> $[=4;
> 
> When did the values stop being restricted to 0 and 1?  *This* is exactly what
> I was asking for, myself.

The manpage (actually the info file) says:

$[
     The index of the first element in an array, and of the first
     character in a substring.  Default is 0, but you could set it to 1
     to make *perl* behave more like `awk' (or Fortran) when
     subscripting and when evaluating the `index()' and `substr()'
     functions.  (Mnemonic: `[' begins subscripts.)


This mentions 0 and 1 as the two most noteworthy values, but doesn't really
say that it is restricted to those values.  If you were misled, then so have
been others.  Maybe a slight rewording would be helpful:


$[ 
     The index of the first element in an array, and of the first
     character in a substring.  The value is an integer with default
     of 0.  You could set it to 1 to make ...


- Len Weisberg - HP Corp Computing & Services - weisberg@corp.HP.COM