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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: FRONTSTUFF p 183 of the perl book ???
Message-ID: <11416@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 12 Feb 91 22:54:28 GMT
References: <STEF.91Feb12142129@zweig.sun>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 22

In article <STEF.91Feb12142129@zweig.sun> stef@zweig.sun (Stephane Payrard) writes:
: FRONTSTUFF p 183 of the perl book:
: 
: I don't understand why it is necessary to
: prepend the value 'FRONTSTUFF' to the list
: defining the %head associative array.

Because the keywords are returned as delimiters, so the first keyword will
be the second field.  If nothing preceeds the keyword in the string, the
first field will be null.  If you have something like a uucp "From " line
on the front, that will be the first field.  Assignment to an associative
array wants each value to be preceeded by its key, so we arbitrarily give
the first field a key of 'FRONTSTUFF'.

: Felicitation to the authors for the quality of their work.  I like
: their style which contrasts very much with the boring and impersonal
: style of most of the technical litterature (even if I need to open
: more often my English dictionnary.)

Thank Tim O for letting us, or rather, encouraging us write that way.

Larry