Perl is a free-form language, you can format and indent it however you like. Whitespace mostly serves to separate tokens, unlike languages like Python where it is an important part of the syntax.
Many of Perl's syntactic elements are optional. Rather than requiring you to put parentheses around every function call and declare every variable, you can often leave such explicit elements off and Perl will figure out what you meant. This is known as Do What I Mean, abbreviated DWIM. It allows programmers to be lazy and to code in a style with which they are comfortable.
Perl borrows syntax and concepts from many languages: awk, sed, C, Bourne Shell, Smalltalk, Lisp and even English. Other languages have borrowed syntax from Perl, particularly its regular expression extensions. So if you have programmed in another language you will see familiar pieces in Perl. They often work the same, but see perltrap for information about how they differ.
my $a;
if ($a) {}
are exempt from warnings (because they care about truth rather than definedness). Operators such as "++", "--", "+=", "-=", and ".=", that operate on undefined left values such as:
my $a;
$a++;
are also always exempt from such warnings.
A declaration can be put anywhere a statement can, but has no effect on the execution of the primary sequence of statements---declarations all take effect at compile time. Typically all the declarations are put at the beginning or the end of the script. However, if you're using lexically-scoped private variables created with "my()", you'll have to make sure your format or subroutine definition is within the same block scope as the my if you expect to be able to access those private variables.
Declaring a subroutine allows a subroutine name to be used as if it were a list operator from that point forward in the program. You can declare a subroutine without defining it by saying "sub name", thus:
sub myname;
$me = myname $0 or die "can't get myname";
Note that myname() functions as a list operator, not as a unary operator; so be careful to use "or" instead of "||" in this case. However, if you were to declare the subroutine as "sub myname ($)", then "myname" would function as a unary operator, so either "or" or "||" would work.
Subroutines declarations can also be loaded up with the "require" statement or both loaded and imported into your namespace with a "use" statement. See perlmod for details on this.
A statement sequence may contain declarations of lexically-scoped variables, but apart from declaring a variable name, the declaration acts like an ordinary statement, and is elaborated within the sequence of statements as if it were an ordinary statement. That means it actually has both compile-time and run-time effects.
if EXPR
unless EXPR
while EXPR
until EXPR
foreach LIST
The "EXPR" following the modifier is referred to as the ``condition''. Its truth or falsehood determines how the modifier will behave.
"if" executes the statement once if and only if the condition is true. "unless" is the opposite, it executes the statement unless the condition is true (i.e., if the condition is false).
print "Basset hounds got long ears" if length $ear >= 10;
go_outside() and play() unless $is_raining;
The "foreach" modifier is an iterator: it executes the statement once for each item in the LIST (with $_ aliased to each item in turn).
print "Hello $_!\n" foreach qw(world Dolly nurse);
"while" repeats the statement while the condition is true. "until" does the opposite, it repeats the statement until the condition is true (or while the condition is false):
# Both of these count from 0 to 10.
print $i++ while $i <= 10;
print $j++ until $j > 10;
The "while" and "until" modifiers have the usual ""while" loop" semantics (conditional evaluated first), except when applied to a "do"-BLOCK (or to the deprecated "do"-SUBROUTINE statement), in which case the block executes once before the conditional is evaluated. This is so that you can write loops like:
do {
$line = <STDIN>;
...
} until $line eq ".\n";
See ``do'' in perlfunc. Note also that the loop control statements described later will NOT work in this construct, because modifiers don't take loop labels. Sorry. You can always put another block inside of it (for "next") or around it (for "last") to do that sort of thing. For "next", just double the braces:
do {{
next if $x == $y;
# do something here
}} until $x++ > $z;
For "last", you have to be more elaborate:
LOOP: {
do {
last if $x = $y**2;
# do something here
} while $x++ <= $z;
}
NOTE: The behaviour of a "my" statement modified with a statement modifier conditional or loop construct (e.g. "my $x if ...") is undefined. The value of the "my" variable may be "undef", any previously assigned value, or possibly anything else. Don't rely on it. Future versions of perl might do something different from the version of perl you try it out on. Here be dragons.
But generally, a block is delimited by curly brackets, also known as braces. We will call this syntactic construct a BLOCK.
The following compound statements may be used to control flow:
if (EXPR) BLOCK
if (EXPR) BLOCK else BLOCK
if (EXPR) BLOCK elsif (EXPR) BLOCK ... else BLOCK
LABEL while (EXPR) BLOCK
LABEL while (EXPR) BLOCK continue BLOCK
LABEL until (EXPR) BLOCK
LABEL until (EXPR) BLOCK continue BLOCK
LABEL for (EXPR; EXPR; EXPR) BLOCK
LABEL foreach VAR (LIST) BLOCK
LABEL foreach VAR (LIST) BLOCK continue BLOCK
LABEL BLOCK continue BLOCK
Note that, unlike C and Pascal, these are defined in terms of BLOCKs, not statements. This means that the curly brackets are required--no dangling statements allowed. If you want to write conditionals without curly brackets there are several other ways to do it. The following all do the same thing:
if (!open(FOO)) { die "Can't open $FOO: $!"; }
die "Can't open $FOO: $!" unless open(FOO);
open(FOO) or die "Can't open $FOO: $!"; # FOO or bust!
open(FOO) ? 'hi mom' : die "Can't open $FOO: $!";
# a bit exotic, that last one
The "if" statement is straightforward. Because BLOCKs are always bounded by curly brackets, there is never any ambiguity about which "if" an "else" goes with. If you use "unless" in place of "if", the sense of the test is reversed.
The "while" statement executes the block as long as the expression is true. The "until" statement executes the block as long as the expression is false. The LABEL is optional, and if present, consists of an identifier followed by a colon. The LABEL identifies the loop for the loop control statements "next", "last", and "redo". If the LABEL is omitted, the loop control statement refers to the innermost enclosing loop. This may include dynamically looking back your call-stack at run time to find the LABEL. Such desperate behavior triggers a warning if you use the "use warnings" pragma or the -w flag.
If there is a "continue" BLOCK, it is always executed just before the conditional is about to be evaluated again. Thus it can be used to increment a loop variable, even when the loop has been continued via the "next" statement.
LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
next LINE if /^#/; # discard comments
...
}
The "last" command immediately exits the loop in question. The "continue" block, if any, is not executed:
LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
last LINE if /^$/; # exit when done with header
...
}
The "redo" command restarts the loop block without evaluating the conditional again. The "continue" block, if any, is not executed. This command is normally used by programs that want to lie to themselves about what was just input.
For example, when processing a file like /etc/termcap. If your input lines might end in backslashes to indicate continuation, you want to skip ahead and get the next record.
while (<>) {
chomp;
if (s/\\$//) {
$_ .= <>;
redo unless eof();
}
# now process $_
}
which is Perl short-hand for the more explicitly written version:
LINE: while (defined($line = <ARGV>)) {
chomp($line);
if ($line =~ s/\\$//) {
$line .= <ARGV>;
redo LINE unless eof(); # not eof(ARGV)!
}
# now process $line
}
Note that if there were a "continue" block on the above code, it would get executed only on lines discarded by the regex (since redo skips the continue block). A continue block is often used to reset line counters or "?pat?" one-time matches:
# inspired by :1,$g/fred/s//WILMA/
while (<>) {
?(fred)? && s//WILMA $1 WILMA/;
?(barney)? && s//BETTY $1 BETTY/;
?(homer)? && s//MARGE $1 MARGE/;
} continue {
print "$ARGV $.: $_";
close ARGV if eof(); # reset $.
reset if eof(); # reset ?pat?
}
If the word "while" is replaced by the word "until", the sense of the test is reversed, but the conditional is still tested before the first iteration.
The loop control statements don't work in an "if" or "unless", since they aren't loops. You can double the braces to make them such, though.
if (/pattern/) {{
last if /fred/;
next if /barney/; # same effect as "last", but doesn't document as well
# do something here
}}
This is caused by the fact that a block by itself acts as a loop that executes once, see ``Basic BLOCKs''.
The form "while/if BLOCK BLOCK", available in Perl 4, is no longer available. Replace any occurrence of "if BLOCK" by "if (do BLOCK)".
for ($i = 1; $i < 10; $i++) {
...
}
is the same as this:
$i = 1;
while ($i < 10) {
...
} continue {
$i++;
}
There is one minor difference: if variables are declared with "my" in the initialization section of the "for", the lexical scope of those variables is exactly the "for" loop (the body of the loop and the control sections).
Besides the normal array index looping, "for" can lend itself to many other interesting applications. Here's one that avoids the problem you get into if you explicitly test for end-of-file on an interactive file descriptor causing your program to appear to hang.
$on_a_tty = -t STDIN && -t STDOUT;
sub prompt { print "yes? " if $on_a_tty }
for ( prompt(); <STDIN>; prompt() ) {
# do something
}
Using "readline" (or the operator form, "<EXPR>") as the conditional of a "for" loop is shorthand for the following. This behaviour is the same as a "while" loop conditional.
for ( prompt(); defined( $_ = <STDIN> ); prompt() ) {
# do something
}
The "foreach" keyword is actually a synonym for the "for" keyword, so you can use "foreach" for readability or "for" for brevity. (Or because the Bourne shell is more familiar to you than csh, so writing "for" comes more naturally.) If VAR is omitted, $_ is set to each value.
If any element of LIST is an lvalue, you can modify it by modifying VAR inside the loop. Conversely, if any element of LIST is NOT an lvalue, any attempt to modify that element will fail. In other words, the "foreach" loop index variable is an implicit alias for each item in the list that you're looping over.
If any part of LIST is an array, "foreach" will get very confused if you add or remove elements within the loop body, for example with "splice". So don't do that.
"foreach" probably won't do what you expect if VAR is a tied or other special variable. Don't do that either.
Examples:
for (@ary) { s/foo/bar/ }
for my $elem (@elements) {
$elem *= 2;
}
for $count (10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,'BOOM') {
print $count, "\n"; sleep(1);
}
for (1..15) { print "Merry Christmas\n"; }
foreach $item (split(/:[\\\n:]*/, $ENV{TERMCAP})) {
print "Item: $item\n";
}
Here's how a C programmer might code up a particular algorithm in Perl:
for (my $i = 0; $i < @ary1; $i++) {
for (my $j = 0; $j < @ary2; $j++) {
if ($ary1[$i] > $ary2[$j]) {
last; # can't go to outer :-(
}
$ary1[$i] += $ary2[$j];
}
# this is where that last takes me
}
Whereas here's how a Perl programmer more comfortable with the idiom might do it:
OUTER: for my $wid (@ary1) {
INNER: for my $jet (@ary2) {
next OUTER if $wid > $jet;
$wid += $jet;
}
}
See how much easier this is? It's cleaner, safer, and faster. It's cleaner because it's less noisy. It's safer because if code gets added between the inner and outer loops later on, the new code won't be accidentally executed. The "next" explicitly iterates the other loop rather than merely terminating the inner one. And it's faster because Perl executes a "foreach" statement more rapidly than it would the equivalent "for" loop.
The BLOCK construct can be used to emulate case structures.
SWITCH: {
if (/^abc/) { $abc = 1; last SWITCH; }
if (/^def/) { $def = 1; last SWITCH; }
if (/^xyz/) { $xyz = 1; last SWITCH; }
$nothing = 1;
}
Such constructs are quite frequently used, because older versions of Perl had no official "switch" statement.
use feature "switch";
which enables a switch feature that is closely based on the Perl 6 proposal.
The keywords "given" and "when" are analogous to "switch" and "case" in other languages, so the code above could be written as
given($_) {
when (/^abc/) { $abc = 1; }
when (/^def/) { $def = 1; }
when (/^xyz/) { $xyz = 1; }
default { $nothing = 1; }
}
This construct is very flexible and powerful. For example:
use feature ":5.10";
given($foo) {
when (undef) {
say '$foo is undefined';
}
when ("foo") {
say '$foo is the string "foo"';
}
when ([1,3,5,7,9]) {
say '$foo is an odd digit';
continue; # Fall through
}
when ($_ < 100) {
say '$foo is numerically less than 100';
}
when (\&complicated_check) {
say 'complicated_check($foo) is true';
}
default {
die q(I don't know what to do with $foo);
}
}
"given(EXPR)" will assign the value of EXPR to $_ within the lexical scope of the block, so it's similar to
do { my $_ = EXPR; ... }
except that the block is automatically broken out of by a successful "when" or an explicit "break".
Most of the power comes from implicit smart matching:
when($foo)
is exactly equivalent to
when($_ ~~ $foo)
In fact "when(EXPR)" is treated as an implicit smart match most of the time. The exceptions are that when EXPR is:
then the value of EXPR is used directly as a boolean. Furthermore:
These rules look complicated, but usually they will do what you want. For example you could write:
when (/^\d+$/ && $_ < 75) { ... }
Another useful shortcut is that, if you use a literal array or hash as the argument to "when", it is turned into a reference. So "given(@foo)" is the same as "given(\@foo)", for example.
"default" behaves exactly like "when(1 == 1)", which is to say that it always matches.
See ``Smart matching in detail'' for more information on smart matching.
You can use the "break" keyword to break out of the enclosing "given" block. Every "when" block is implicitly ended with a "break".
You can use the "continue" keyword to fall through from one case to the next:
given($foo) {
when (/x/) { say '$foo contains an x'; continue }
when (/y/) { say '$foo contains a y' }
default { say '$foo contains neither an x nor a y' }
}
Instead of using "given()", you can use a "foreach()" loop. For example, here's one way to count how many times a particular string occurs in an array:
my $count = 0;
for (@array) {
when ("foo") { ++$count }
}
print "\@array contains $count copies of 'foo'\n";
On exit from the "when" block, there is an implicit "next". You can override that with an explicit "last" if you're only interested in the first match.
This doesn't work if you explicitly specify a loop variable, as in "for $item (@array)". You have to use the default variable $_. (You can use "for my $_ (@array)".)
The behaviour of a smart match depends on what type of thing its arguments are. It is always commutative, i.e. "$a ~~ $b" behaves the same as "$b ~~ $a". The behaviour is determined by the following table: the first row that applies, in either order, determines the match behaviour.
$a $b Type of Match Implied Matching Code
====== ===== ===================== =============
(overloading trumps everything)
Code[+] Code[+] referential equality $a == $b
Any Code[+] scalar sub truth $b->($a)
Hash Hash hash keys identical [sort keys %$a]~~[sort keys %$b]
Hash Array hash slice existence grep {exists $a->{$_}} @$b
Hash Regex hash key grep grep /$b/, keys %$a
Hash Any hash entry existence exists $a->{$b}
Array Array arrays are identical[*]
Array Regex array grep grep /$b/, @$a
Array Num array contains number grep $_ == $b, @$a
Array Any array contains string grep $_ eq $b, @$a
Any undef undefined !defined $a
Any Regex pattern match $a =~ /$b/
Code() Code() results are equal $a->() eq $b->()
Any Code() simple closure truth $b->() # ignoring $a
Num numish[!] numeric equality $a == $b
Any Str string equality $a eq $b
Any Num numeric equality $a == $b
Any Any string equality $a eq $b
+ - this must be a code reference whose prototype (if present) is not ""
(subs with a "" prototype are dealt with by the 'Code()' entry lower down)
* - that is, each element matches the element of same index in the other
array. If a circular reference is found, we fall back to referential
equality.
! - either a real number, or a string that looks like a number
The ``matching code'' doesn't represent the real matching code, of course: it's just there to explain the intended meaning. Unlike "grep", the smart match operator will short-circuit whenever it can.
Custom matching via overloading
You can change the way that an object is matched by overloading the "~~" operator. This trumps the usual smart match semantics. See overload.
The Perl 5 smart match and "given"/"when" constructs are not absolutely identical to their Perl 6 analogues. The most visible difference is that, in Perl 5, parentheses are required around the argument to "given()" and "when()". Parentheses in Perl 6 are always optional in a control construct such as "if()", "while()", or "when()"; they can't be made optional in Perl 5 without a great deal of potential confusion, because Perl 5 would parse the expression
given $foo {
...
}
as though the argument to "given" were an element of the hash %foo, interpreting the braces as hash-element syntax.
The table of smart matches is not identical to that proposed by the Perl 6 specification, mainly due to the differences between Perl 6's and Perl 5's data models.
In Perl 6, "when()" will always do an implicit smart match with its argument, whilst it is convenient in Perl 5 to suppress this implicit smart match in certain situations, as documented above. (The difference is largely because Perl 5 does not, even internally, have a boolean type.)
The "goto"-LABEL form finds the statement labeled with LABEL and resumes execution there. It may not be used to go into any construct that requires initialization, such as a subroutine or a "foreach" loop. It also can't be used to go into a construct that is optimized away. It can be used to go almost anywhere else within the dynamic scope, including out of subroutines, but it's usually better to use some other construct such as "last" or "die". The author of Perl has never felt the need to use this form of "goto" (in Perl, that is---C is another matter).
The "goto"-EXPR form expects a label name, whose scope will be resolved dynamically. This allows for computed "goto"s per FORTRAN, but isn't necessarily recommended if you're optimizing for maintainability:
goto(("FOO", "BAR", "GLARCH")[$i]);
The "goto"-&NAME form is highly magical, and substitutes a call to the named subroutine for the currently running subroutine. This is used by "AUTOLOAD()" subroutines that wish to load another subroutine and then pretend that the other subroutine had been called in the first place (except that any modifications to @_ in the current subroutine are propagated to the other subroutine.) After the "goto", not even "caller()" will be able to tell that this routine was called first.
In almost all cases like this, it's usually a far, far better idea to use the structured control flow mechanisms of "next", "last", or "redo" instead of resorting to a "goto". For certain applications, the catch and throw pair of "eval{}" and die() for exception processing can also be a prudent approach.
=head1 Here There Be Pods!
Then that text and all remaining text up through and including a line beginning with "=cut" will be ignored. The format of the intervening text is described in perlpod.
This allows you to intermix your source code and your documentation text freely, as in
=item snazzle($)
The snazzle() function will behave in the most spectacular
form that you can possibly imagine, not even excepting
cybernetic pyrotechnics.
=cut back to the compiler, nuff of this pod stuff!
sub snazzle($) {
my $thingie = shift;
.........
}
Note that pod translators should look at only paragraphs beginning with a pod directive (it makes parsing easier), whereas the compiler actually knows to look for pod escapes even in the middle of a paragraph. This means that the following secret stuff will be ignored by both the compiler and the translators.
$a=3;
=secret stuff
warn "Neither POD nor CODE!?"
=cut back
print "got $a\n";
You probably shouldn't rely upon the "warn()" being podded out forever. Not all pod translators are well-behaved in this regard, and perhaps the compiler will become pickier.
One may also use pod directives to quickly comment out a section of code.
# example: '# line 42 "new_filename.plx"'
/^\# \s*
line \s+ (\d+) \s*
(?:\s("?)([^"]+)\2)? \s*
$/x
with $1 being the line number for the next line, and $3 being the optional filename (specified with or without quotes).
There is a fairly obvious gotcha included with the line directive: Debuggers and profilers will only show the last source line to appear at a particular line number in a given file. Care should be taken not to cause line number collisions in code you'd like to debug later.
Here are some examples that you should be able to type into your command shell:
% perl
# line 200 "bzzzt"
# the `#' on the previous line must be the first char on line
die 'foo';
__END__
foo at bzzzt line 201.
% perl
# line 200 "bzzzt"
eval qq[\n#line 2001 ""\ndie 'foo']; print $@;
__END__
foo at - line 2001.
% perl
eval qq[\n#line 200 "foo bar"\ndie 'foo']; print $@;
__END__
foo at foo bar line 200.
% perl
# line 345 "goop"
eval "\n#line " . __LINE__ . ' "' . __FILE__ ."\"\ndie 'foo'";
print $@;
__END__
foo at goop line 345.