On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 11:13:00PM -0500, Peter wrote:
> I'm on the first few chapters of "Learning Perl" and came up with a
> question. Given:
>
> -------------------------------------
>
> @array = qw ( one two three );
> print @array . "\n";
> print @array;
>
> -------------------------------------
>
> Why does the first print statement print "3" (and a carriage return)
> while the second prints "onetwothree"? I'm guessing that the first
> print sees the array in scalar context while the second sees it in list
> context, but if so I don't understand why. Can someone break it down
> what the concatenation operator is doing here?
You nailed it; it's a context problem. C<print> evaluates its
arguments in list context, but C<.> evaluates ITS arguments in scalar
context, and it gets evaluated before the print. This would be more
clear if we pretended that C<.> was a prefix function like C<print>,
instead of a circumfix. Then the lines above would look like this:
print( .(@array, "\n") );
^ ^
| |------- scalar context starts here
|
list context starts here
In contrast, when you do this:
print( @array );
...there is no context at work except that enforced by the C<print>.
Did that help?
--Dks
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