Re: How do I delete a row of an array

[ChrisR]

I could be wrong about this, very wrong considering the other answers to your post but here it is anyway. The delete function should take care of this for you. Here is an example:

delete $array[$index];

or

delete $array[$index][$index2];

This should remove the specified element from the array. If this is incorrect, I'm sorry for the confusion and would appreciate it if someone could explain why delete won't work for this.

Update:
According to the camel book, starting with perl version 5.6, this function will work for arrays whereas in previous versions it only worked with hashes. It also says: Deleting from an array causes the element at the specified position to revert to a completely uninitialized state, but it doesn't close up the gap. Is this the reason that delete shouldn't be used and if so what are the specific pitfalls in this?

[vek]

Is this the reason that delete shouldn't be used and if so what are the specific pitfalls in this?

Well one reason would be that your code would break if you needed it to run on Perl < 5.6. You'd also have to take into account that the element itself does not get removed. A 10 element array is still a 10 element array only now one of the elements has an uninitialized value. If you take that into account in your code you'll be ok.

for my $foo (@array) {
   next if (! $foo);
}

Personally I'd stick with splice as it's more DWIM - remove an element in the middle of an array and the index of the ones after it will now shift down.