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Question about foreach loop behavior

scribby182
New User

Oct 4, 2012, 11:05 AM

Post #1 of 4 (662 views)

Question about foreach loop behavior	Can't Post

First of all, thank you for reading and I apologize for the pretty basic question.

I am writing a simple loop that strips any "/" characters from the end of each entry in an array. I have:

#!/usr/bin/perl

my @postDIRs = ("test1/","test2/");

foreach my $postDIR (@postDIRs) {
print "(A) before = $postDIR\n";
$postDIR =~ s/\/*$//;
print "(A) after = $postDIR\n";
}

foreach (@postDIRs) {
print "(B) after = $_\n";
}

which gives the output:

(A) before = test1/
(A) after = test1
(A) before = test2/
(A) after = test2
(B) after = test1
(B) after = test2

The (A) lines were as I expected, but the (B) lines were surprising. I did not expect that changing $postDIR in the loop would change the original entry in @postDIRs. Is this the usual behavior of a foreach loop? Any explanation about the mechanics of the foreach loop or how this works would be really appreciated.

Thanks for your help,

Scribby182

BillKSmith
Veteran

Oct 4, 2012, 1:25 PM

Post #2 of 4 (659 views)

Re: [scribby182] Question about foreach loop behavior [In reply to]	Can't Post

The short answer is "yes". I agree that it is a bit strange, but it is well documented. Refer to the third paragraph about foreach loops in perldoc perlsyn.
Good Luck,
Bill

Laurent_R
Enthusiast

Oct 4, 2012, 3:27 PM

Post #3 of 4 (654 views)

Re: [scribby182] Question about foreach loop behavior [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi,

when you write:

Code

foreach my $postDIR (@postDIRs) { 
print "(A) before = $postDIR\n"; 
$postDIR =~ s/\/*$//; 
print "(A) after = $postDIR\n"; 
}

you have to understand that $postDIR is not a copy of the individual values of the elements of the @postDIRs array, but an alias for each element (for performance reasons, the values are not copied to a new variable, $postDIR is each time through the loop an alias to the real value of the array). In other words, when you modify $postDir in the following line:

Code

$postDIR =~ s/\/*$//;

you are actually modifying the original @postDIRs array.

So that when you go through the same array the second time:

Code

foreach (@postDIRs) { 
print "(B) after = $_\n"; 
}

the array has been modified by the first foreach loop, and the "\" are already gone, as the elements were modifies in the first loop.

scribby182
New User

Oct 5, 2012, 6:52 AM

Post #4 of 4 (645 views)

Re: [Laurent_R] Question about foreach loop behavior [In reply to]	Can't Post

Thank you both for your very clear explanations, this makes complete sense now.

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