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From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Do be do be do.
Message-ID: <1991Feb04.034645.3658@convex.com>
Date: 4 Feb 91 03:46:45 GMT
References: <1991Feb4.012916.7944@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU> <1991Feb04.015138.28575@convex.com> <121266@uunet.UU.NET>
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Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX
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From the keyboard of rbj@uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim):
:Yeah, but it's not a "do SUBROUTINE", it's a "&SUBROUTINE".
:Oh. They're the same thing? I don't think they should be.

Almost but not quite the same thing.  (Larry will catch me if I'm lying.)

    do SUBROUTINE();

is the same as

    &SUBROUTINE();

But *NOT* the same as 

    &SUBROUTINE;

The difference is whether we set up a new @_ array for our param list.
Doing so takes a wee more time and memory than not doing so.  

Whether it should be this way or not is another matter.  Perl isn't 
supposed to be pretty, you know, merely expedient. :-)

--tom
--
"Still waiting to read alt.fan.dan-bernstein using DBWM, Dan's own AI
window manager, which argues with you 10 weeks before resizing your window." 
### And now for the question of the month:  How do you spell relief?   Answer:
U=brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu; echo "/From: $U/h:j" >>~/News/KILL; expire -f $U