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From: rodney@sun.ipl.rpi.edu (Rodney Peck II)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Do be do be do.
Message-ID: <=9#&{B*@rpi.edu>
Date: 2 Feb 91 04:04:10 GMT
References: <ii7G7s5c@cs.psu.edu>
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY
Lines: 33
Nntp-Posting-Host: ipl.rpi.edu

In article <ii7G7s5c@cs.psu.edu> flee@cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes:
>I spent fifteen minutes staring at this thing, wondering why it didn't
>work right:
>	sub put {
>		local($x) = @_;
>		print $x;
>		$currentposition += length($x);
>	}
>	$currentposition = 1;
>	$desiredposition = 1;
>	&put(' ') while $currentposition < $desiredposition;
>
>It prints one space rather than none.
>
>Perl semantics are much too toxic for ordinary household use.
>--
>Felix Lee	flee@cs.psu.edu

That's an easy one.

you've got the while syntax wrong.  I don't know what your version does,
but it will most likely _always_ exec put(' ') once and then do something
about the while part.

The thing you are trying to say is this:


	while ($currentposition < $desiredposition)
	  { &put(' '); }


-- 
Rodney