Perl: references (bug?)

[CaptainPinko]

I'm not sure if this is a bug or my misunderstanding of the Perl syntax. I'm having problems with using references.

sub printArray {
  my @array = @($_[0]);

  my $prefix = (defined $_[1])? $_[1]: "";

  foreach my $item (sort @array)
    {print $prefix.$item."\n";}
}


my $root = "e:\\";

sub printArray;

opendir (DIR, $root);
my @contents = readdir (DIR);

printArray (\@contents);

I keep on getting an error on with, apparently, @array being unitialized. Upon further investigation it appears that the problem is in the assignment to @array. Apparently it doesn't like scalar symbol not directly being followed by another variable type character (ie. $ @ % & etc.) or a variable name.
I tried removing the brackets around $_[0], but then it seemd to be trying to perform the deferencing on just the $_; not including the [0]; I found a workaround by:

  my $temp = $_[0];
  my @array = @$temp;

but this is an ugly workaround, wastes memory (ie. extra variable), and its ugly/cumbesome/annoying/etc.. It also seems very unPerl-ish. Is this a bug or is this intentional? If its intentional anyone care to explain WHY?!? Does anyone else have this problem or this just w/ my interpreter?

[phpman]

not a bug in PERL, a bug in the script. If you just want to print the contents of a dir why not just print it instead of trying to hand it off to a sub?

my $root = "e:\\";
opendir(DIR, "$root");
@files = sort(readdir(DIR));
closedir(DIR);
foreach (@files) {
print "$_<br>\n";
}

if you really want to use the sub, maybe something like this:

sub printArray {
my @array = @_;

my $prefix = (defined $_[1])? $_[1]: "";

foreach my $item (@array) {
print $prefix.$item."\n";
}
}

[CaptainPinko]

Originally posted by phpman
not a bug in PERL, a bug in the script. If you just want to print the contents of a dir why not just print it instead of trying to hand it off to a sub?

how is that an error in the script? its just seems like a difference in approach to me... the sub that i was passing it to formated the output and did our tasks that were core to the prog.

[phpman]

jeez 2 months later.

difference in approach but mine doesn't seem to be a bug.

if they are so different then why complain about a bug in Perl.

[JoshT]

Off the top of my head, I'm going to guess something like this would work.

sub printArray {
  my $array = shift;

  print $array->[0];

}

printArray (\@contents);

[CaptainPinko]

i don't remember seeing a -. operator, what is it?

[JoshT]

You mean -> - its a dereference operator, used heavlily in OO perl for calling methods of objects. But basically, you passed a scalar reference o the array, so you dereference the scalar to get at the array it references.

use CGI;
my $cgi = new CGI;
print $cgi->param('formfield');