http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=993493


in reply to Newbie: query about array assignment

"=" has a higher precedence than ",", thats why you need the parens.

  DB<104> dp @stuff = "This","That","Other"; 
{
    ((@stuff = 'This'), 'That', 'Other');
}
  DB<105> dp @stuff = ("This","That","Other"); 
{
    (@stuff = ('This', 'That', 'Other'));
}

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UPDATE: the following example shows that you (almost) never really need parens for lists, it's just precendence:

  DB<111> sub list { "This","That","Other" }
 
  DB<112> @stuff = list()
 => ("This", "That", "Other")

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Cheers Rolf

PS: don't be confused "dp" is my personal debugger-macro for using B::Deparse (with -p option to show parens)

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