Re: How to get 0 to initialize a value

[tangent]

When I run your code I do not get the warnings you mention, but this line:

my $first_novel = $novel_list->[$first_book];

does give a warning fatal error (praise be to monk of anomaly). @novel_list is a plain array not an array reference - it should be:

my $first_novel = $novel_list[$first_book];