Re: Back to Remedial Perl for Me: map{} function

[Anonymous Monk]

Question for the monks:

Isn't it true you could do something like this (even though it's probably not in keeping with the intent of map)?

# a way to count the number of elements in a list
my $count = 0;
my @listOfThings = ('one', 'two', 'three');
map { ++$count } @listOfThings;
print "There are $count things in your list of things.\n";

This example completely ignores the fact that the elements in the list are assigned to $_. We could care less what was in those elements. All we want to do is to execute this block once for each element that is in the list.

[merlyn]

I'd just write that as

++$count for @listOfThings;

Shorter even. {grin}

And yeah, for this specific example, I wouldn't even use a loop, as in:

$count += @listOfThings;

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[Anonymous Monk]

Of course...

I just wanted to point out that you don't have to really do anything with the elements of @listOfThings if you don't want to; you can do something completely unrelated.

As an aside, and you may call this trolling (or you may not), I just wanted to see what people would say about this sort of use of map. It's probably a Bad Idea. It would be really interesting to see if somebody could convince me it's a Good Idea. :-)