http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=924650


in reply to Strange construct

This method must return a list, and the fifth element was the only thing useful to the caller. Expanding it out, it may make more sense.

my $bg = ($c->itemconfigure(qw/current -background/))[4];

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my @values = $c->itemconfigure(qw/current -background/);
my $bg = $values[4];

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You often see this for builtin functions like stat() or localtime(). They return lists of potentially useful stuff, but you may only need one thing. The documentation for each one clearly shows the meaning of each returned value in a list of returned values.

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Re^2: Strange construct
by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Sep 07, 2011 at 20:05 UTC
    ... you may only need one thing.

    And if you need more than one thing, that can be handled, too: 

    >perl -wMstrict -le
"my @ra =
   (qw(start a b c e l p r y z end))[-1, 6, 4, 7, 5, 1..3, 0];
 ;;
 printf qq{'$_' } for @ra;
"
'end' 'p' 'e' 'r' 'l' 'a' 'b' 'c' 'start'

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