Re: Is it ok to assign a popped value to a variable as shown.

[johngg]

As others have mentioned, handling arrays like this in some sort of loop is a common idiom. Something that can trip you up is the distinction between "true" and "defined" which can terminate your loop early if you don't take care. Consider the two following snippets:-

knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ perl -Mstrict -wE '
> my @arr = ( 7, 28, -8, 0, 12, 67 );
> while ( my $val = shift @arr )
> {
>     say $val;
> }'
7
28
-8
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$

knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ perl -Mstrict -wE '
> my @arr = ( 7, 28, -8, 0, 12, 67 );
> while ( defined( my $val = shift @arr ) )
> {
>     say $val;
> }'
7
28
-8
0
12
67
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$

Note that in the first example, the loop terminates when accessing the fourth element. This is because the value of that element is zero which means the expression my $val = shift @arr tests as "false" so the while loop finishes earlier than you might expect. Adding a test for defined overcomes this problem in the second snippet.

I hope this is helpful.