... I need the previous value of @data ...
If you mean you need to return the element in the @data array immediately prior to the first element in the array that matches the string passed into the function, I think I would use something like this (Update: an empty string is returned if no match):
>perl -wMstrict -le
"print get_IATA('bar');
;;
sub get_IATA {
my ($airline) = @_;
;;
my @data = qw(fee fie foe foo barbell boff);
;;
for my $i (1 .. $#data) {
return $data[$i - 1] if $data[$i] =~ m{ \A \Q$airline\E }xms;
}
return '';
}
"
foo
Update: Here's a variation that returns every element in the @data array immediately prior to an element in the array that matches the string passed into the function. An empty list is returned if no match.
>perl -wMstrict -le
"printf qq{'$_' } for get_IATA('bar');
;;
sub get_IATA {
my ($airline) = @_;
;;
my @data = qw(fee fie yyy barfly foe fum zzz barbell foo);
;;
return
map { $data[$_] =~ m{ \A \Q$airline\E }xms ? $data[$_ - 1] : () }
1 .. $#data
;
}
"
'yyy' 'zzz'
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