in reply to using pop and shift to find the sum of an array
You can randomly use pop and shift to remove elements one at a time from either end of your array and add them to the sum, doing this in a loop while there are still elements in the array. However, this obviously destroys your array.
$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E ' > my @arr = ( 1 .. 10 ); > my $sum; > $sum += int rand 2 ? shift @arr : pop @arr while @arr; > say $sum; > say qq{-> @arr <-};' 55 -> <- $
If, on the other hand, you wish to preserve your array, do the same thing in an on-the-fly subroutine with your array as the argument, which is passed into the subroutine as the @_ array (see perlvar and perlsub). The pop and shift functions inside a subroutine operate on @_ by default, leaving your @arr array untouched.
$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E ' > my @arr = ( 1 .. 10 ); > my $sum = sub { > my $sum; > $sum += int rand 2 ? shift : pop while @_; > return $sum; > }->( @arr ); > say $sum; > say qq{-> @arr <-};' 55 -> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 <- $
I hope this is helpful.
Update: Clarified the wording a little.
Cheers,
JohnGG
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