Re^2: changing the position of an element in an array

[nobull]

Actually a simple splice/push will not change the position of an element in an array, it will create a new element that comtains a copy of the value from the old of element.

my @array = ( 'foo', 'bar', 'baz' );
my ($pos) = grep { $array[$_] eq 'bar' } 0..$#array;
my $ref_to_element = \$array[$pos];
push (@array, splice(@array, $pos, 1));
print "@array\n"; # Prints 'foo baz bar'
$$ref_to_element = 'zap';
print "@array\n"; # Still prints 'foo baz bar'

Had $array[1] been moved to the end of the array then $$ref_to_element would point to $array[2] after the move.

Admittedly, this is usually not an issue.

On the rare occasions when you really want to move elements of an array use Array::Splice. In the above example you would use push_aliases() in place of the built-in push().