This is regarding a warning message I received when running a Perl script.
I understand why I'm receiving this warning: probably because $element is undefined when being called but I don't see it.
for ( my $element->{$_}; #previous_company_names; ) {
map { $element => $previous_company_names->{$_} }
0 .. $previous_company_names;
The result is this message
Use of uninitialized value $_ in hash element
First and foremost - for a new programmer, absolutely the most important thing you must do, is use strict; and use warnings;. You've got my in there, which suggests you might be, but it pays to re-iterate it.
$_ is a special variable, called the implicit variable. It doesn't really make sense to use it in the way you're doing like that, in a for loop. Take a look at perlvar for some more detail.
Indeed, I'd suggest steering clear of map entirely until you really grok it, because it's a good way to confuse yourself.
With a for (or foreach) loop you can either:
for my $thing ( #list_of_things ) {
print $thing;
}
Or you can do:
for ( #list_of_things ) {
print $_;
}
$_ is set implicitly by each iteration of the second loop, which can be quite useful because lots of things default to using it.
E.g.
for ( #list_of_things ) {
chomp;
s/ /_/g;
print;
}
When it comes to map - map is a clever little function, that lets you evaluate a code block for each element in a list. Personally - I still get confused by it, and tend to stick with for or foreach loops instead, most of the time.
But what you're doing with it, isn't really going to work - map makes a hash.
So something like:
use Data::Dumper;
my %things = map { $_ => 1 } 1..5;
print Dumper \%things;
This creates the hash 'things':
$VAR1 = {
'1' => 1,
'3' => 1,
'5' => 1,
'4' => 1,
'2' => 1
};
Again, $_ is used inside, because it's the magic variable - it's set to 'whatever was in the second bit' (e.g 1,2,3,4,5) each loop, and then the block is evaluated.
So your map expression doesn't really make a lot of sense, because you don't have $element defined... and even if you did, you'd repeatedly overwrite it.
I would also note - $previous_company_names would need to be numeric, and is in NO way related to #previous_company_names. You might be meaning to use $#previous_company_names which is the last element index.
I'm looping through an array, and I want to test if an element is found in another array.
In pseudo-code, what I'm trying to do is this:
foreach $term (#array1) {
if ($term is found in #array2) {
#do something here
}
}
I've got the "foreach" and the "do something here" parts down-pat ... but everything I've tried for the "if term is found in array" test does NOT work ...
I've tried grep:
if grep {/$term/} #array2 { #do something }
# this test always succeeds for values of $term that ARE NOT in #array2
if (grep(/$term/, #array2)) { #do something }
# this test likewise succeeds for values NOT IN the array
I've tried a couple different flavors of "converting the array to a hash" which many previous posts have indicated are so simple and easy ... and none of them have worked.
I am a long-time low-level user of perl, I understand just the basics of perl, do not understand all the fancy obfuscated code that comprises 99% of the solutions I read on the interwebs ... I would really, truly, honestly appreciate any answers that are explicit in the code and provide a step-by-step explanation of what the code is doing ...
... I seriously don't grok $_ and any other kind or type of hidden, understood, or implied value, variable, or function. I would really appreciate it if any examples or samples have all variables and functions named with clear terms ($term as opposed to $_) ... and describe with comments what the code is doing so I, in all my mentally deficient glory, may hope to possibly understand it some day. Please. :-)
...
I have an existing script which uses 'grep' somewhat succesfully:
$rc=grep(/$term/, #array);
if ($rc eq 0) { #something happens here }
but I applied that EXACT same code to my new script and it simply does NOT succeed properly ... i.e., it "succeeds" (rc = zero) when it tests a value of $term that I know is NOT present in the array being tested. I just don't get it.
The ONLY difference in my 'grep' approach between 'old' script and 'new' script is how I built the array ... in old script, I built array by reading in from a file:
#array=`cat file`;
whereas in new script I put the array inside the script itself (coz it's small) ... like this:
#array=("element1","element2","element3","element4");
How can that result in different output of the grep function? They're both bog-standard arrays! I don't get it!!!! :-(
########################################################################
addendum ... some clarifications or examples of my actual code:
########################################################################
The term I'm trying to match/find/grep is a word element, for example "word123".
This exercise was just intended to be a quick-n-dirty script to find some important info from a file full of junk, so I skip all the niceties (use strict, warnings, modules, subroutines) by choice ... this doesn't have to be elegant, just simple.
The term I'm searching for is stored in a variable which is instantiated via split:
foreach $line(#array1) {
chomp($line); # habit
# every line has multiple elements that I want to capture
($term1,$term2,$term3,$term4)=split(/\t/,$line);
# if a particular one of those terms is found in my other array 'array2'
if (grep(/$term2/, #array2) {
# then I'm storing a different element from the line into a 3rd array which eventually will be outputted
push(#known, $term1) unless $seen{$term1}++;
}
}
see that grep up there? It ain't workin right ... it is succeeding for all values of $term2 even if it is definitely NOT in array2 ... array1 is a file of a couple thousand lines. The element I'm calling $term2 here is a discrete term that may be in multiple lines, but is never repeated (or part of a larger string) within any given line. Array2 is about a couple dozen elements that I need to "filter in" for my output.
...
I just tried one of the below suggestions:
if (grep $_ eq $term2, #array2)
And this grep failed for all values of $term2 ... I'm getting an all or nothing response from grep ... so I guess I need to stop using grep. Try one of those hash solutions ... but I really could use more explanation and clarification on those.
This is in perlfaq. A quick way to do it is
my %seen;
$seen{$_}++ for #array1;
for my $item (#array2) {
if ($seen{$item}) {
# item is in array2, do something
}
}
If letter case is not important, you can set the keys with $seen{ lc($_) } and check with if ($seen{ lc($item) }).
ETA:
With the changed question: If the task is to match single words in #array2 against whole lines in #array1, the task is more complicated. Trying to split the lines and match against hash keys will likely be unsafe, because of punctuation and other such things. So, a regex solution will likely be the safest.
Unless #array2 is very large, you might do something like this:
my $rx = join "|", #array2;
for my $line (#array1) {
if ($line =~ /\b$rx\b/) { # use word boundary to avoid partial matches
# do something
}
}
If #array2 contains meta characters, such as *?+|, you have to make sure they are escaped, in which case you'd do something like:
my $rx = join "|", map quotemeta, #array2;
# etc
You could use the (infamous) "smart match" operator, provided you are on 5.10 or later:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my #array1 = qw/a b c d e f g h/;
my #array2 = qw/a c e g z/;
print "a in \#array1\n" if 'a' ~~ #array1;
print "z in \#array1\n" if 'z' ~~ #array1;
print "z in \#array2\n" if 'z' ~~ #array2;
The example is very simple, but you can use an RE if you need to as well.
I should add that not everyone likes ~~ because there are some ambiguities and, um, "undocumented features". Should be OK for this though.
This should work.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my #array1 = qw/a b c d e f g h/;
my #array2 = qw/a c e g z/;
for my $term (#array1) {
if (grep $_ eq $term, #array2) {
print "$term found.\n";
}
}
Output:
a found.
c found.
e found.
g found.
#!/usr/bin/perl
#ar = ( '1','2','3','4','5','6','10' );
#arr = ( '1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9' ) ;
foreach $var ( #arr ){
print "$var not found\n " if ( ! ( grep /$var/, #ar )) ;
}
Pattern matching is the most efficient way of matching elements. This would do the trick. Cheers!
print "$element found in the array\n" if ("#array" =~ m/$element/);
Your 'actual code' shouldn't even compile:
if (grep(/$term2/, #array2) {
should be:
if (grep (/$term2/, #array2)) {
You have unbalanced parentheses in your code. You may also find it easier to use grep with a callback (code reference) that operates on its arguments (the array.) It helps keep the parenthesis from blurring together. This is optional, though. It would be:
if (grep {/$term2/} #array2) {
You may want to use strict; and use warnings; to catch issues like this.
The example below might be helpful, it tries to see if any element in #array_sp is present in #my_array:
#! /usr/bin/perl -w
#my_array = qw(20001 20003);
#array_sp = qw(20001 20002 20004);
print "#array_sp\n";
foreach $case(#my_array){
if("#array_sp" =~ m/$case/){
print "My God!\n";
}
}
use pattern matching can solve this. Hope it helps
-QC
1. grep with eq , then
if (grep {$_ eq $term2} #array2) {
print "$term2 exists in the array";
}
2. grep with regex , then
if (grep {/$term2/} #array2) {
print "element with pattern $term2 exists in the array";
}
I'm working from a question I posted earlier (here), and trying to convert the answer to a sub so I can use it multiple times. Not sure that it's done right though. Can anyone provide a better or cleaner sub?
I have a good deal of experience programming, but my primary language is PHP. It's frustrating to know how to execute in one language, but not be able to do it in another.
sub search_for_key
{
my ($args) = #_;
foreach $row(#{$args->{search_ary}}){
print "#$row[0] : #$row[1]\n";
}
my $thiskey = NULL;
my #result = map { $args->{search_ary}[$_][0] } # Get the 0th column...
grep { #$args->{search_in} =~ /$args->{search_ary}[$_][1]/ } # ... of rows where the
0 .. $#array; # first row matches
$thiskey = #result;
print "\nReturning: " . $thiskey . "\n";
return $thiskey;
}
search_for_key({
'search_ary' => $ref_cam_make,
'search_in' => 'Canon EOS Rebel XSi'
});
---Edit---
From the answers so far, I've cobbled together the function below. I'm new to Perl, so I don't really understand much of the syntax. All I know is that it throws an error (Not an ARRAY reference at line 26.) about that grep line.
Since I seem to not have given enough info, I will also mention that:
I am calling this function like this (which may or may not be correct):
search_for_key({
'search_ary' => $ref_cam_make,
'search_in' => 'Canon EOS Rebel XSi'
});
And $ref_cam_make is an array I collect from a database table like this:
$ref_cam_make = $sth->fetchall_arrayref;
And it is in the structure like this (if I understood how to make the associative fetch work properly, I would like to use it like that instead of by numeric keys):
Reference Array
Associative
row[1][cam_make_id]: 13, row[1][name]: Sony
Numeric
row[1][0]: 13, row[1][1]: Sony
row[0][0]: 19, row[0][1]: Canon
row[2][0]: 25, row[2][1]: HP
sub search_for_key
{
my ($args) = #_;
foreach my $row(#{$args->{search_ary}}){
print "#$row[0] : #$row[1]\n";
}
print grep { $args->{search_in} =~ #$args->{search_ary}[$_][1] } #$args->{search_ary};
}
You are moving in the direction of a 2D array, where the [0] element is some sort of ID number and the [1] element is the camera make. Although reasonable in a quick-and-dirty way, such approaches quickly lead to unreadable code. Your project will be easier to maintain and evolve if you work with richer, more declarative data structures.
The example below uses hash references to represent the camera brands. An even nicer approach is to use objects. When you're ready to take that step, look into Moose.
use strict;
use warnings;
demo_search_feature();
sub demo_search_feature {
my #camera_brands = (
{ make => 'Canon', id => 19 },
{ make => 'Sony', id => 13 },
{ make => 'HP', id => 25 },
);
my #test_searches = (
"Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-S600",
"Canon cameras",
"Sony HPX-32",
);
for my $ts (#test_searches){
print $ts, "\n";
my #hits = find_hits($ts, \#camera_brands);
print ' => ', cb_stringify($_), "\n" for #hits;
}
}
sub cb_stringify {
my $cb = shift;
return sprintf 'id=%d make=%s', $cb->{id}, $cb->{make};
}
sub find_hits {
my ($search, $camera_brands) = #_;
return grep { $search =~ $_->{make} } #$camera_brands;
}
This whole sub is really confusing, and I'm a fairly regular perl user. Here are some blanket suggestions.
Do not create your own undef ever -- use undef then return at the bottom return $var // 'NULL'.
Do not ever do this: foreach $row, because foreach my $row is less prone to create problems. Localizing variables is good.
Do not needlessly concatenate, for it offends the style god: not this, print "\nReturning: " . $thiskey . "\n";, but print "\nReturning: $thiskey\n";, or if you don't need the first \n: say "Returning: $thiskey;" (5.10 only)
greping over 0 .. $#array; is categorically lame, just grep over the array: grep {} #{$foo[0]}, and with that code being so complex you almost certainly don't want grep (though I don't understand what you're doing to be honest.). Check out perldoc -q first -- in short grep doesn't stop until the end.
Lastly, do not assign an array to a scalar: $thiskey = #result; is an implicit $thiskey = scalar #result; (see perldoc -q scalar) for more info. What you probably want is to return the array reference. Something like this (which eliminates $thiskey)
printf "\nReturning: %s\n", join ', ', #result;
#result ? \#result : 'NULL';
If you're intending to return whether a match is found, this code should work (inefficiently). If you're intending to return the key, though, it won't -- the scalar value of #result (which is what you're getting when you say $thiskey = #result;) is the number of items in the list, not the first entry.
$thiskey = #result; should probably be changed to $thiskey = $result[0];, if you want mostly-equivalent functionality to the code you based this off of. Note that it won't account for multiple matches anymore, though, unless you return #result in its entirety, which kinda makes more sense anyway.
I am cleaning my Perl code for production release and came across a weird warning in the Apache error log.
It says:
[Thu Nov 5 15:19:02 2009] Clouds.pm: Use of uninitialized value $name in substitution (s///) at /home/mike/workspace/olefa/mod-bin/OSA/Clouds.pm line 404.
The relevant code is here:
my $name = shift #_;
my $name_options = shift #_;
$name_options = $name_options eq 'unique' ? 'u'
: $name_options eq 'overwrite' ? 'o'
: $name_options eq 'enumerate' ? 'e'
: $name_options =~ m/^(?:u|o|e)$/ ? $name_options
: q();
if ($name_options ne 'e') {
$name =~ s/ /_/g;
}
So, why the warning of an uninitialized variable as it is clearly initialized?
The warning simply means that $name was never filled with a value, and you tried doing a substitution operation (s///) on it. The default value of a variable is undefined (undef).
Looking back through your script, $name gets its value from #_. This means either #_ was empty, or had its first value as undef.
Depending on what your subroutine needs to do, validate your values before you use them. In this case, since you need something in $name, croak if there isn't something in that variable. You'll get an error message from the perspective of the caller and you'll find the culprit.
Also, you can lose the complexity of the conditional operator chain by making it a hash lookup, which also gives you a chance to initialize $name_option. In your fallback case, you leave $name_option undefined:
use 5.010;
use Carp;
BEGIN {
my %valid_name_options = map {
$_
substr( $_, 0, 1 ),
} qw( unique overwrite enumerate );
some_sub {
my( $name, $name_options ) = #_;
croak( "Name is not defined!" ) unless defined $name;
$name_options = $valid_name_options{$name_options} // '';
if ($name_options ne 'e') {
$name =~ s/ /_/g;
}
...
}
}
Debug by divide and conquer
It is quite usual to run into bugs that are "obviously impossible" --- at the first glance. I usually try to confirm my assumptions with simple print statements (or equivalent ways to get some information back from the program: For CGI scripts, a simple print can ruin your headers).
So, I would put a statement like
print "testing: ", defined($name)? "defined: '$name'" : "undef", "\n";
into the code at the suspected line. You might be surprised about the possible output options:
"testing: undef" --- this means that your function was called with an undefined first argument. Unlikely but possible. You may want to use caller() to find out from where it was called and check the data there.
no output at all! Maybe you look at the wrong source file or at the wrong line. (I don't suspect that's the case here, but it does happen to me).
"testing: defined: 'some data'" --- oops. ask a question on stackoverflow.
What? Perl Beautiful? Elegant? He must be joking!
It's true, there's some ugly Perl out there. And by some, I mean lots. We've all seen it.
Well duh, it's symbol soup. Isn't it?
Yes there are symbols. Just like 'math' has 'symbols'. It's just that we programmers are more familiar with the standard mathematical symbols. We grew to accept the symbols from our mother languages, whether that be ASM, C, or Pascal. Perl just decided to have a few more.
Well, I think we should get rid of all the unnecessary symbols. Makes the code look better.
The language for doing so already exists. It's called Lisp. (and soon, perl 6.)
Okay, smart guy. Truth is, I can already invent my own symbols. They're called functions and methods. Besides, we don't want to reinvent APL.
Oh, fake alter ego, you are so funny! It's really true, Perl can be quite beautiful. It can be quite ugly, as well. With Perl, TIMTOWTDI.
So, what are your favorite elegant bits of Perl code?
Perl facilitates the use of lists/hashes to implement named parameters, which I consider very elegant and a tremendous aid to self-documenting code.
my $result = $obj->method(
flux_capacitance => 23,
general_state => 'confusion',
attitude_flags => ATTITUDE_PLEASANT | ATTITUDE_HELPFUL,
);
My favourite pieces of elegant Perl code aren't necessarily elegant at all. They're meta-elegant, and allow you to get rid of all those bad habits that many Perl developers have slipped into. It would take me hours or days to show them all in the detail they deserve, but as a short list they include:
autobox, which turns Perl's primitives into first-class objects.
autodie, which causes built-ins to throw exceptions on failure (removing most needs for the or die... construct). See also my autodie blog and video).
Moose, which provide an elegant, extensible, and correct way of writing classes in Perl.
MooseX::Declare, which provides syntaxic aweseomeness when using Moose.
Perl::Critic, your personal, automatic, extensible and knowledgeable code reviewer. See also this Perl-tip.
Devel::NYTProf, which provides me the most detailed and usable profiling information I've seen in any programming language. See also Tim Bunce's Blog.
PAR, the Perl Archiver, for bundling distributions and even turning whole programs into stand-alone executable files. See also this Perl-tip.
Perl 5.10, which provides some stunning regexp improvements, smart-match, the switch statement, defined-or, and state variables.
Padre, the only Perl editor that integrates the best bits of the above, is cross-platform, and is completely free and open source.
If you're too lazy to follow links, I recently did a talk at Linux.conf.au about most of the above. If you missed it, there's a video of it on-line (ogg theora). If you're too lazy to watch videos, I'm doing a greatly expanded version of the talk as a tutorial at OSCON this year (entitled doing Perl right).
All the best,
Paul
I'm surprised no one mentioned the Schwartzian Transform.
my #sorted =
map { $_->[0] }
sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] }
map { [ $_, expensive_func($_) ] }
#elements;
And in the absence of a slurp operator,
my $file = do { local $/; readline $fh };
Have a list of files the user wants your program to process? Don't want to accidentally process a program, folder, or nonexistent file? Try this:
#files = grep { -T } #files;
And, like magic, you've weeded out all the inappropriate entries. Don't want to ignore them silently? Add this line before the last one:
warn "Not a file: $_" foreach grep { !-T } #files;
Prints a nice warning message for every file that it can't process to standard error. The same thing without using grep would look like this:
my #good;
foreach(#files) {
if(-T) {
push #good, $_;
} else {
warn "Not a file: $_";
}
}
grep (and map) can be used to make code shorter while still keeping it very readable.
The "or die" construct:
open my $fh, "<", $filename
or die "could not open $filename: $!";
The use of qr// to create grammars:
#!/usr/local/ActivePerl-5.10/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use feature ':5.10';
my $non_zero = qr{[1-9]};
my $zero = qr{0};
my $decimal = qr{[.]};
my $digit = qr{$non_zero+ | $zero}x;
my $non_zero_natural = qr{$non_zero+ $digit*}x;
my $natural = qr{$non_zero_natural | $zero}x;
my $integer = qr{-? $non_zero_natural | $zero}x;
my $real = qr{$integer (?: $decimal $digit)?}x;
my %number_types = (
natural => qr/^$natural$/,
integer => qr/^$integer$/,
real => qr/^$real$/
);
for my $n (0, 3.14, -5, 300, "4ever", "-0", "1.2.3") {
my #types = grep { $n =~ $number_types{$_} } keys %number_types;
if (#types) {
say "$n is of type", #types == 1 ? " ": "s ", "#types";
} else {
say "$n is not a number";
}
}
Anonymous subroutines used to factor out duplicate code:
my $body = sub {
#some amount of work
};
$body->();
$body->() while $continue;
instead of
#some amount of work
while ($continue) {
#some amount of work again
}
Hash based dispatch tables:
my %dispatch = (
foo => \&foo,
bar => \&bar,
baz => \&baz
);
while (my $name = iterator()) {
die "$name not implemented" unless exists $dispatch{$name};
$dispatch{$name}->();
}
instead of
while (my $name = iterator()) {
if ($name eq "foo") {
foo();
} elsif ($name eq "bar") {
bar();
} elsif ($name eq "baz") {
baz();
} else {
die "$name not implemented";
}
}
Three-line classes with constructors, getter/setters and type validation:
{
package Point;
use Moose;
has ['x', 'y'] => (isa => 'Num', is => 'rw');
}
package main;
my $point = Point->new( x => '8', y => '9' );
$point->x(25);
A favorite example of mine is Perl's implementation of a factorial calculator. In Perl 5, it looks like so:
use List::Util qw/reduce/;
sub factorial {
reduce { $a * $b } 1 .. $_[0];
}
This returns false if the number is <= 1 or a string and a number if a number is passed in (rounding down if a fraction).
And looking forward to Perl 6, it looks like this:
sub factorial {
[*] 1..$^x
}
And also ( from the blog in the link above ) you can even implement this as an operator:
sub postfix:<!>(Int $x) {
[*] 1..($x || 1)
}
and then use it in your code like so:
my $fact5 = 5!;
If you have a comma separated list of flags, and want a lookup table for them, all you have to do is:
my %lookup = map { $_ => 1 } split /,/, $flags;
Now you can simply test for which flags you need like so:
if ( $lookup{FLAG} ) {
print "Ayup, got that flag!";
}
I am surprised no one has mentioned this. It's a masterpiece in my opinion:
#!/usr/bin/perl
$==$';
$;||$.| $|;$_
='*$ ( ^#(%_+&~~;# ~~/.~~
;_);;.);;#) ;~~~~;_,.~~,.* +,./|~
~;_);#-, .;.); ~ ~,./##-__);#-);~~,.*+,.
/|);;;~~#-~~~~;.~~,. /.);;.,./#~~#-;.;#~~#-;;
;;,.*+,./.);;#;./#,./ |~~~~;#-(#-__#-__&$#%^';$__
='`'&'&';$___="````" |"$[`$["|'`%",';$~=("$___$__-$[``$__"|
"$___"| ("$___$__-$[.%")).("'`"|"'$["|"'#").
'/.*?&([^&]*)&.*/$'.++$=.("/``"|"/$[`"|"/#'").(";`/[\\`\\`$__]//`;"
|";$[/[\\$[\\`$__]//`;"|";#/[\\\$\\.$__]//'").'#:=("#-","/.",
"~~",";#",";;",";.",",.",");","()","*+","__","-(","/#",".%","/|",
";_");#:{#:}=$%..$#:;'.('`'|"$["|'#')."/(..)(..)/".("```"|"``$["|
'#("').'(($:{$'.$=.'}<<'.(++$=+$=).')|($:{$'.$=.'}))/'.("```;"|
"``$[;"|"%'#;").("````'$__"|"%$[``"|"%&!,").${$[};`$~$__>&$=`;$_=
'*$(^#(%_+&#-__~~;#~~#-;.;;,.(),./.,./|,.-();;#~~#-);;;,.;_~~#-,./.,
./#,./#~~#-);;;,.(),.;.~~#-,.,.,.;_,./#,.-();;#~~#-,.;_,./|~~#-,.
,.);););#-#-__~~;#~~#-,.,.,.;_);~~~~#-);;;,.(),.*+);;# ~~#-,
./|,.*+,.,.);;;);*+~~#-,.*+,.;;,.;.,./.~~#-,.,.,.;_) ;~~~
~#-,.;;,.;.,./#,./.);*+,.;.,.;;#-__~~;#~~#-,.;;,.* +);;
#);#-,./#,./.);*+~~#-~~.%~~.%~~#-;;__,. /.);;##- __#-
__ ~~;;);/#;#.%;#/.;#-(#-__~~;;;.;_ ;#.%~~~~ ;;()
,.;.,./#,. /#,.;_~~#- ););,.;_ );~~,./ #,.
;;;./#,./| ~~~~;#-(#- __,.,.,. ;_);~~~ ~#
-~~());; #);#-,./#, .*+);;; ~~#-~~
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-);~~, .*+,./ |);;;~ ~#-~~
;;;.; _~~#-# -__);. %;#-(
#-__# -__~~;# ~~#-;; ;#,.
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..%, .;.,./|) ;;;)
;;#~ ~#-,.*+,. ,.~~
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;,.*+ ,./|,.); ~~#- );;;,.(
),.*+); ;#~~/|#-
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I absolutely love Black Perl (link to version rewritten to compile under Perl 5). It compiles, but as far as I can tell it doesn't actually do anything.
That's what you get for a language written by a linguist from a pragmatic perspective rather than from a theoretical perspective.
Moving on from that, you can think about the Perl that people complain about as pidgin Perl (perfectly useful, but not expressive, and beware of trying to express anything complex in it), and the stuff that #pjf is talking about as "proper" Perl, the language of Shakespeare, Hemingway, Hume and so on. [edit: err, though easier to read than Hume and less dated than Shakespeare.] [re-edit and hopefully less alcoholic than Hemingway]
Adding to the love of map and grep, we can write a simple command-line parser.
my %opts = map { $_ => 1 } grep { /^-/ } #ARGV;
If we want, we can set each flag to it's index in #ARGV:
my %opts = map { $ARGV[$_] => $_ } grep { $ARGV[$_] =~ /^-/ } 0 .. $#ARGV;
That way, if a flag has an argument, we can get the argument like this:
if( defined( $opts{-e} ) ) {
my $arg = $ARGV[ $opts{-e} ];
# do -e stuff for $arg
}
Of course, some people will cry that we're reinventing the wheel and we should use getopt or some variant thereof, but honestly, this was a fairly easy wheel to reinvent. Plus, I don't like getopt.
If you don't like how long some of those lines are, you can always use intermediate variables or just convenient line breaks (hey, Python fanatics? You hear that? We can put one line of code across two lines and it still works!) to make it look better:
my %opts = map { $ARGV[$_] => $_ }
grep { $ARGV[$_] =~ /^-/ } 0 .. $#ARGV;
This file parsing mechanism is compact and easy to customize (skip blank lines, skip lines starting with X, etc..).
open(H_CONFIG, "< $file_name") or die("Error opening file: $file_name! ($!)");
while (<H_CONFIG>)
{
chomp; # remove the trailing newline
next if $_ =~ /^\s*$/; # skip lines that are blank
next if $_ =~ /^\s*#/; # skip lines starting with comments
# do something with the line
}
I use this type of construct in diverse build situations - where I need to either pre or post process payload files (S-records, etc..) or C-files or gather directory information for a 'smart build'.
My favourite elegant Perl feature is that it uses different operators for numerical values and string values.
my $string = 1 . 2;
my $number = "1" + "2";
my $unambiguous = 1 . "2";
Compare this to other dynamic languages such as JavaScript, where "+" is used for concatenation and addition.
var string = "1" + "2";
var number = 1 + 2;
var ambiguous = 1 + "2";
Or to dynamic languages such as Python and Ruby that require type coercion between strings and numberical values.
string = "1" + "2"
number = 1 + 2
throws_exception = 1 + "2"
In my opinion Perl gets this so right and the other languages get it so wrong.
Poorer typists like me who get cramps hitting the shift key too often and have an almost irrational fear of using a semicolon started writing our Perl code in python formatted files. :)
e.g.
>>> k = 5
>>> reduce(lambda i,j: i*j, range(1,k+1),1)
120
>>> k = 0
>>> reduce(lambda i,j: i*j, range(1,k+1),1)
1