Mysterious append failure.

If anyone can think of a better title, /msg me and I'll change it.

Probably another of my "can't see the wood for the trees" questions, but why does this work:

P:\test>perl -wl
my $b .= 'fred' . 'bill';
print $b;;
^Z
fredbill
[download]

And this:

P:\test>perl -wl
my $a = 'a' x 10;
my $b;
$b .= substr( $a, $_, 10-$_ ) . '-' x $_ for 0 .. 9;
print $b;
^Z
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaa--aaaaaaa---aaaaaa----aaaaa-----aaaa------
+aaa-------aa--------a---------
[download]

But not this?

P:\test>perl -wl
my $a = 'a' x 10;
my $b .= substr( $a, $_, 10-$_ ) . '-' x $_ for 0 .. 9;
print $b;
^Z
Use of uninitialized value in print at - line 3.
[download]

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"But you should never overestimate the ingenuity of the sceptics to come up with a counter-argument." -Myles Allen
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Comment on Mysterious append failure. Select or Download Code
Re: Mysterious append failure. by ccn (Vicar) on Dec 09, 2004 at 12:32 UTC
Lexical `$b` is out of scope. see `D:\temp>perl -MO=Deparse -e "my $b = 1 for 1 .. 10" ; foreach $_ (1 .. 10) { my $b = 1; } -e syntax OK D:\temp>` [download] So, your code is the same as `P:\test>perl -wl my $a = 'a' x 10; foreach $_ (0 .. 9) my $b .= substr( $a, $_, 10-$_ ) . '-' x $_; } print $main::b; ^Z Use of uninitialized value in print at - line 3.` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Mysterious append failure. by gothic_mallard (Pilgrim) on Dec 09, 2004 at 12:35 UTC
Ahh.. that looks like it makes sense. Was forgetting for a minute that declaring `$b` there would actually scope it inside the loop. D'oh. --- Jay All code is untested unless otherwise stated. All opinions expressed are my own and are intended as guidance, not gospel; please treat what I say as such and as Abigail said Think for yourself. If in doubt ask.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Mysterious append failure. by dave_the_m (Parson) on Dec 09, 2004 at 12:48 UTC
Was forgetting for a minute that declaring $b there would actually scope it inside the loop. This isn't quite true - the output of Deparse is wrong. The lexical is scoped wider than the loop, as can be seen here: `$ perl585 -le '$x=99; my $x = $_ for 1..3; print $x' $` [download] (Note that $::x isn't printed, the lexical $x is instead.) However, the initialising and releasing of $x is scoped to within the loop. That may be construed as a bug. There again, statement modifiers on my declarations are usally buggy, and are best avoided. Dave.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Mysterious append failure. by gothic_mallard (Pilgrim) on Dec 09, 2004 at 12:33 UTC
I came across this same thing yesterday while trying to do a one-line append loop. I thought it was something to do with the `my` - possibly re-initialising on each loop? Haven't got to the bottom of it yet and basically ended up doing like you have in the second example (declare the variable and then do the loop seperately). --- Jay All code is untested unless otherwise stated. All opinions expressed are my own and are intended as guidance, not gospel; please treat what I say as such and as Abigail said Think for yourself. If in doubt ask.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Mysterious append failure. by broquaint (Abbot) on Dec 09, 2004 at 12:39 UTC
Because you're declaring a variable in a loop and it falls out of scope outside of the loop e.g `perl -we "my $a = q[foo] for 1; print $a" Use of uninitialized value in print at -e line 1.` [download] It's statement modifier abuse essentially. HTH `_________ broquaint`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Mysterious append failure. by Jasper (Chaplain) on Dec 09, 2004 at 14:02 UTC
I was going to say that `use strict` would have shown up your problem, but you're using $a and $b, so it probably wouldn't have been much use, after all. Bad $a. Bad $b. edit: `[jasper@carabosse spamjab]$ perl -le 'use strict; my$x=99; my $x = $_ +for 1..3; print $x' [jasper@carabosse spamjab]$ perl -le 'use strict; my$x=99; for (1..3){ +my $x=$_}; print $x' 99 [jasper@carabosse spamjab]$` [download] curious? Is it?	[reply] [d/l] [select]


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Mysterious append failure.

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