undefined variable increments in PERL

gaynut · 09-12-2008, 05:42 AM

Hi,

I'm just not clear about the variables in PERL.

Try,

$i++;
print $i;

on the CLI or in a program.
It prints the output as 1

Query:
Notice that i haven't declared/defined the variable.
It is not assined to any value even zero.
In that case, when i try to some arithmetic on a variable that is undefined , shouldn't the interpreter throw some error.

If this is expected, why should this be so?

Can somebody help me unerstanding this plzzz?

Thanks,
~ gaynut

Telemachos · 09-12-2008, 06:45 AM

From perldoc perlsyn

Quote:

Declarations

The only things you need to declare in Perl are report formats and
subroutines (and sometimes not even subroutines). A variable holds the
undefined value ("undef") until it has been assigned a defined value,
which is anything other than "undef". When used as a number, "undef"
is treated as 0; when used as a string, it is treated as the empty
string, ""; and when used as a reference that isn't being assigned to,
it is treated as an error. If you enable warnings, you'll be notified
of an uninitialized value whenever you treat "undef" as a string or a
number. Well, usually. Boolean contexts, such as:

my $a;
if ($a) {}

are exempt from warnings (because they care about truth rather than
definedness). Operators such as "++", "--", "+=", "-=", and ".=", that
operate on undefined left values such as:

my $a;
$a++;

are also always exempt from such warnings.

Perl ain't C (or many other languages). You don't need to predeclare $i. When you apply ++ to $i, Perl assumes you know what you are doing. It moves $i from 0 (treating it as a number, undef = 0) and then increments it to 1.

Edit: if you have Perl,you almost certainly have perldoc installed (try perldoc perldoc and perldoc perltoc for an intro to the documentation and its structure), but you can also find it online here: http://perldoc.perl.org/

chrism01 · 09-12-2008, 07:11 AM

Personally I recommend starting all Perl progs with

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict; # Enforce declarations

ie turn on warnings and strict. They'll save you from a lot of issues. Also, to check a perl prog without running it use:

perl -wc prog.pl

gaynut · 09-18-2008, 09:46 AM

Telemachos,chrism01,

Ur reply explains me things clearly.
thanks.

~ gaynut