Stirctly speaking, shift() can be used on any array to remove the top (0^th) element and return it. But, shift() defaults to @_ if no array is supplied. Since shift is removeing and returning only the first (0^th) element, assigning it's return to and array does not work. But, since Perl always tries it's hardest, it take the one value from the right (the return from shift) and assigns it to the first element on the left. Then, when there is no second value, it simply assigns undef to the folloing vars. Thats the simple version, without getting into stacks and such

---

_{can't sleep clowns will eat me}
-- MZSanford

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.