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From: marcl@ESD.3Com.COM (Marc Lavine)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Is it legal to assign an array to @_ inside a subroutine?
Message-ID: <marcl.675151107@cook.ESD.3Com.COM>
Date: 25 May 91 05:58:27 GMT
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When I run the enclosed script (with Perl 4.003), I get the following
output:

@a=9,8,7
@_=9,8,7
@a=1,2,3
@_=

instead of what I expected:

@a=9,8,7
@_=9,8,7
@a=1,2,3
@_=1,2,3

The assignment of a list to @_ seems to result in @_ becoming empty.
Is there something special about assigning to @_ inside a subroutine
or have I come across a bug?  Any insights would be appreciated.


#!/usr/local/bin/perl

sub f
    {
    @a = @_;
    print ( "\@a=", join ( ',', @a ), "\n" );
    print ( "\@_=", join ( ',', @_ ), "\n" );
    @a = ( 1, 2, 3 );
    @_ = ( 1, 2, 3 );
    print ( "\@a=", join ( ',', @a ), "\n" );
    print ( "\@_=", join ( ',', @_ ), "\n" );
    }

&f ( 9, 8, 7 );
--
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