Re: How can I find the index of the biggest element in an array?

[Skeeve]

my $i = $#data;
my $max = $i;
$max = $data[$i] > $data[$max] ? $i : $max while $i--;
print "Max value is $data[$max], at index $max\n"

[Jenda]

I don't think it's good to scare people with a ternary operator and statement modifier in one statement. I do think

while ($i--) {
  $max = $i if $data[$i] > $data[$max];
}

would be much more readable. I'd probably write it like this though:

my $max = 0;
for (0 .. $#data) {
    $max = $_ if $data[$_] > $data[$max]
}

Update (suggested by ysth): It's actually better to start looping at index 1:

my $max = 0;
for (1 .. $#data) {
    $max = $_ if $data[$_] > $data[$max]
}

There's no point in comparing the first element to itself.