Re: [FWP] Constants as array refs

[Ronald J Kimball <rjk@linguist.dartmouth.edu>]

On Thu, Mar 23, 2000 at 03:17:42PM -0500, John Porter wrote:
> Jeff Boes wrote:
> > 
> >   use constant CARRAY => [1, 2, 3, 4];
> > 
> > What is the syntax to dereference this constant directly into the list of a
> > 'foreach' loop?
> 
> It is (very unfortunately) necessary to remember that constants
> defined with "use constant" are actually subroutines.
> 
> 	for ( @{ &CARRAY } ) { ...

Using the & syntax prevents Perl from optimizing calls to constant
subroutines.  Doesn't make a difference in this case, because CARRAY
returns an anonymous array rather than a scalar constant, but in general
its preferable to use + or () to disambiguate subroutine calls from
barewords.

Ronald


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