perlsyn
PERLSYN(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLSYN(1)
NAME
perlsyn - Perl syntax
DESCRIPTION
A Perl program consists of a sequence of declarations and statements
which run from the top to the bottom. Loops, subroutines and other
control structures allow you to jump around within the code.
Perl is a free-form language, you can format and indent it however you
like. Whitespace mostly serves to separate tokens, unlike languages
like Python where it is an important part of the syntax.
Many of Perl's syntactic elements are optional. Rather than requiring
you to put parentheses around every function call and declare every
variable, you can often leave such explicit elements off and Perl will
figure out what you meant. This is known as Do What I Mean, abbrevi-
ated DWIM. It allows programmers to be lazy and to code in a style
with which they are comfortable.
Perl borrows syntax and concepts from many languages: awk, sed, C,
Bourne Shell, Smalltalk, Lisp and even English. Other languages have
borrowed syntax from Perl, particularly its regular expression exten-
sions. So if you have programmed in another language you will see
familiar pieces in Perl. They often work the same, but see perltrap
for information about how they differ.
Declarations
The only things you need to declare in Perl are report formats and sub-
routines (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.
A declaration can be put anywhere a statement can, but has no effect on
the execution of the primary sequence of statements--declarations all
take effect at compile time. Typically all the declarations are put at
the beginning or the end of the script. However, if you're using lexi-
cally-scoped private variables created with "my()", you'll have to make
sure your format or subroutine definition is within the same block
scope as the my if you expect to be able to access those private vari-
ables.
Declaring a subroutine allows a subroutine name to be used as if it
were a list operator from that point forward in the program. You can
declare a subroutine without defining it by saying "sub name", thus:
sub myname;
$me = myname $0 or die "can't get myname";
Note that myname() functions as a list operator, not as a unary opera-
tor; so be careful to use "or" instead of "||" in this case. However,
if you were to declare the subroutine as "sub myname ($)", then
"myname" would function as a unary operator, so either "or" or "||"
would work.
Subroutines declarations can also be loaded up with the "require"
statement or both loaded and imported into your namespace with a "use"
statement. See perlmod for details on this.
A statement sequence may contain declarations of lexically-scoped vari-
ables, but apart from declaring a variable name, the declaration acts
like an ordinary statement, and is elaborated within the sequence of
statements as if it were an ordinary statement. That means it actually
has both compile-time and run-time effects.
Comments
Text from a "#" character until the end of the line is a comment, and
is ignored. Exceptions include "#" inside a string or regular expres-
sion.
Simple Statements
The only kind of simple statement is an expression evaluated for its
side effects. Every simple statement must be terminated with a semi-
colon, unless it is the final statement in a block, in which case the
semicolon is optional. (A semicolon is still encouraged if the block
takes up more than one line, because you may eventually add another
line.) Note that there are some operators like "eval {}" and "do {}"
that look like compound statements, but aren't (they're just TERMs in
an expression), and thus need an explicit termination if used as the
last item in a statement.
Truth and Falsehood
The number 0, the strings '0' and '', the empty list "()", and "undef"
are all false in a boolean context. All other values are true.
Statement Modifiers
Any simple statement may optionally be followed by a SINGLE modifier,
just before the terminating semicolon (or block ending). The possible
modifiers are:
if EXPR
unless EXPR
while EXPR
until EXPR
foreach LIST
The "EXPR" following the modifier is referred to as the "condition".
Its truth or falsehood determines how the modifier will behave.
"if" executes the statement once if and only if the condition is true.
"unless" is the opposite, it executes the statement unless the condi-
tion is true (i.e., if the condition is false).
print "Basset hounds got long ears" if length $ear >= 10;
go_outside() and play() unless $is_raining;
The "foreach" modifier is an iterator: it executes the statement once
for each item in the LIST (with $_ aliased to each item in turn).
print "Hello $_!\n" foreach qw(world Dolly nurse);
"while" repeats the statement while the condition is true. "until"
does the opposite, it repeats the statement until the condition is true
(or while the condition is false):
# Both of these count from 0 to 10.
print $i++ while $i <= 10;
print $j++ until $j > 10;
The "while" and "until" modifiers have the usual ""while" loop" seman-
tics (conditional evaluated first), except when applied to a "do"-BLOCK
(or to the deprecated "do"-SUBROUTINE statement), in which case the
block executes once before the conditional is evaluated. This is so
that you can write loops like:
do {
$line = <STDIN>;
...
} until $line eq ".\n";
See "do" in perlfunc. Note also that the loop control statements
described later will NOT work in this construct, because modifiers
don't take loop labels. Sorry. You can always put another block
inside of it (for "next") or around it (for "last") to do that sort of
thing. For "next", just double the braces:
do {{
next if $x == $y;
# do something here
}} until $x++ > $z;
For "last", you have to be more elaborate:
LOOP: {
do {
last if $x = $y**2;
# do something here
} while $x++ <= $z;
}
NOTE: The behaviour of a "my" statement modified with a statement modi-
fier conditional or loop construct (e.g. "my $x if ...") is undefined.
The value of the "my" variable may be "undef", any previously assigned
value, or possibly anything else. Don't rely on it. Future versions
of perl might do something different from the version of perl you try
it out on. Here be dragons.
Compound Statements
In Perl, a sequence of statements that defines a scope is called a
block. Sometimes a block is delimited by the file containing it (in
the case of a required file, or the program as a whole), and sometimes
a block is delimited by the extent of a string (in the case of an
eval).
But generally, a block is delimited by curly brackets, also known as
braces. We will call this syntactic construct a BLOCK.
The following compound statements may be used to control flow:
if (EXPR) BLOCK
if (EXPR) BLOCK else BLOCK
if (EXPR) BLOCK elsif (EXPR) BLOCK ... else BLOCK
LABEL while (EXPR) BLOCK
LABEL while (EXPR) BLOCK continue BLOCK
LABEL for (EXPR; EXPR; EXPR) BLOCK
LABEL foreach VAR (LIST) BLOCK
LABEL foreach VAR (LIST) BLOCK continue BLOCK
LABEL BLOCK continue BLOCK
Note that, unlike C and Pascal, these are defined in terms of BLOCKs,
not statements. This means that the curly brackets are required--no
dangling statements allowed. If you want to write conditionals without
curly brackets there are several other ways to do it. The following
all do the same thing:
if (!open(FOO)) { die "Can't open $FOO: $!"; }
die "Can't open $FOO: $!" unless open(FOO);
open(FOO) or die "Can't open $FOO: $!"; # FOO or bust!
open(FOO) ? 'hi mom' : die "Can't open $FOO: $!";
# a bit exotic, that last one
The "if" statement is straightforward. Because BLOCKs are always
bounded by curly brackets, there is never any ambiguity about which
"if" an "else" goes with. If you use "unless" in place of "if", the
sense of the test is reversed.
The "while" statement executes the block as long as the expression is
true (does not evaluate to the null string "" or 0 or "0"). The LABEL
is optional, and if present, consists of an identifier followed by a
colon. The LABEL identifies the loop for the loop control statements
"next", "last", and "redo". If the LABEL is omitted, the loop control
statement refers to the innermost enclosing loop. This may include
dynamically looking back your call-stack at run time to find the LABEL.
Such desperate behavior triggers a warning if you use the "use warn-
ings" pragma or the -w flag.
If there is a "continue" BLOCK, it is always executed just before the
conditional is about to be evaluated again. Thus it can be used to
increment a loop variable, even when the loop has been continued via
the "next" statement.
Loop Control
The "next" command starts the next iteration of the loop:
LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
next LINE if /^#/; # discard comments
...
}
The "last" command immediately exits the loop in question. The "con-
tinue" block, if any, is not executed:
LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
last LINE if /^$/; # exit when done with header
...
}
The "redo" command restarts the loop block without evaluating the con-
ditional again. The "continue" block, if any, is not executed. This
command is normally used by programs that want to lie to themselves
about what was just input.
For example, when processing a file like /etc/termcap. If your input
lines might end in backslashes to indicate continuation, you want to
skip ahead and get the next record.
while (<>) {
chomp;
if (s/\\$//) {
$_ .= <>;
redo unless eof();
}
# now process $_
}
which is Perl short-hand for the more explicitly written version:
LINE: while (defined($line = <ARGV>)) {
chomp($line);
if ($line =~ s/\\$//) {
$line .= <ARGV>;
redo LINE unless eof(); # not eof(ARGV)!
}
# now process $line
}
Note that if there were a "continue" block on the above code, it would
get executed only on lines discarded by the regex (since redo skips the
continue block). A continue block is often used to reset line counters
or "?pat?" one-time matches:
# inspired by :1,$g/fred/s//WILMA/
while (<>) {
?(fred)? && s//WILMA $1 WILMA/;
?(barney)? && s//BETTY $1 BETTY/;
?(homer)? && s//MARGE $1 MARGE/;
} continue {
print "$ARGV $.: $_";
close ARGV if eof(); # reset $.
reset if eof(); # reset ?pat?
}
If the word "while" is replaced by the word "until", the sense of the
test is reversed, but the conditional is still tested before the first
iteration.
The loop control statements don't work in an "if" or "unless", since
they aren't loops. You can double the braces to make them such,
though.
if (/pattern/) {{
last if /fred/;
next if /barney/; # same effect as "last", but doesn't document as well
# do something here
}}
This is caused by the fact that a block by itself acts as a loop that
executes once, see "Basic BLOCKs and Switch Statements".
The form "while/if BLOCK BLOCK", available in Perl 4, is no longer
available. Replace any occurrence of "if BLOCK" by "if (do BLOCK)".
For Loops
Perl's C-style "for" loop works like the corresponding "while" loop;
that means that this:
for ($i = 1; $i < 10; $i++) {
...
}
is the same as this:
$i = 1;
while ($i < 10) {
...
} continue {
$i++;
}
There is one minor difference: if variables are declared with "my" in
the initialization section of the "for", the lexical scope of those
variables is exactly the "for" loop (the body of the loop and the con-
trol sections).
Besides the normal array index looping, "for" can lend itself to many
other interesting applications. Here's one that avoids the problem you
get into if you explicitly test for end-of-file on an interactive file
descriptor causing your program to appear to hang.
$on_a_tty = -t STDIN && -t STDOUT;
sub prompt { print "yes? " if $on_a_tty }
for ( prompt(); <STDIN>; prompt() ) {
# do something
}
Using "readline" (or the operator form, "<EXPR>") as the conditional of
a "for" loop is shorthand for the following. This behaviour is the
same as a "while" loop conditional.
for ( prompt(); defined( $_ = <STDIN> ); prompt() ) {
# do something
}
Foreach Loops
The "foreach" loop iterates over a normal list value and sets the vari-
able VAR to be each element of the list in turn. If the variable is
preceded with the keyword "my", then it is lexically scoped, and is
therefore visible only within the loop. Otherwise, the variable is
implicitly local to the loop and regains its former value upon exiting
the loop. If the variable was previously declared with "my", it uses
that variable instead of the global one, but it's still localized to
the loop. This implicit localisation occurs only in a "foreach" loop.
The "foreach" keyword is actually a synonym for the "for" keyword, so
you can use "foreach" for readability or "for" for brevity. (Or
because the Bourne shell is more familiar to you than csh, so writing
"for" comes more naturally.) If VAR is omitted, $_ is set to each
value.
If any element of LIST is an lvalue, you can modify it by modifying VAR
inside the loop. Conversely, if any element of LIST is NOT an lvalue,
any attempt to modify that element will fail. In other words, the
"foreach" loop index variable is an implicit alias for each item in the
list that you're looping over.
If any part of LIST is an array, "foreach" will get very confused if
you add or remove elements within the loop body, for example with
"splice". So don't do that.
"foreach" probably won't do what you expect if VAR is a tied or other
special variable. Don't do that either.
Examples:
for (@ary) { s/foo/bar/ }
for my $elem (@elements) {
$elem *= 2;
}
for $count (10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,'BOOM') {
print $count, "\n"; sleep(1);
}
for (1..15) { print "Merry Christmas\n"; }
foreach $item (split(/:[\\\n:]*/, $ENV{TERMCAP})) {
print "Item: $item\n";
}
Here's how a C programmer might code up a particular algorithm in Perl:
for (my $i = 0; $i < @ary1; $i++) {
for (my $j = 0; $j < @ary2; $j++) {
if ($ary1[$i] > $ary2[$j]) {
last; # can't go to outer :-(
}
$ary1[$i] += $ary2[$j];
}
# this is where that last takes me
}
Whereas here's how a Perl programmer more comfortable with the idiom
might do it:
OUTER: for my $wid (@ary1) {
INNER: for my $jet (@ary2) {
next OUTER if $wid > $jet;
$wid += $jet;
}
}
See how much easier this is? It's cleaner, safer, and faster. It's
cleaner because it's less noisy. It's safer because if code gets added
between the inner and outer loops later on, the new code won't be acci-
dentally executed. The "next" explicitly iterates the other loop
rather than merely terminating the inner one. And it's faster because
Perl executes a "foreach" statement more rapidly than it would the
equivalent "for" loop.
Basic BLOCKs and Switch Statements
A BLOCK by itself (labeled or not) is semantically equivalent to a loop
that executes once. Thus you can use any of the loop control state-
ments in it to leave or restart the block. (Note that this is NOT true
in "eval{}", "sub{}", or contrary to popular belief "do{}" blocks,
which do NOT count as loops.) The "continue" block is optional.
The BLOCK construct is particularly nice for doing case structures.
SWITCH: {
if (/^abc/) { $abc = 1; last SWITCH; }
if (/^def/) { $def = 1; last SWITCH; }
if (/^xyz/) { $xyz = 1; last SWITCH; }
$nothing = 1;
}
There is no official "switch" statement in Perl, because there are
already several ways to write the equivalent.
However, starting from Perl 5.8 to get switch and case one can use the
Switch extension and say:
use Switch;
after which one has switch and case. It is not as fast as it could be
because it's not really part of the language (it's done using source
filters) but it is available, and it's very flexible.
In addition to the above BLOCK construct, you could write
SWITCH: {
$abc = 1, last SWITCH if /^abc/;
$def = 1, last SWITCH if /^def/;
$xyz = 1, last SWITCH if /^xyz/;
$nothing = 1;
}
(That's actually not as strange as it looks once you realize that you
can use loop control "operators" within an expression. That's just the
binary comma operator in scalar context. See "Comma Operator" in per-
lop.)
or
SWITCH: {
/^abc/ && do { $abc = 1; last SWITCH; };
/^def/ && do { $def = 1; last SWITCH; };
/^xyz/ && do { $xyz = 1; last SWITCH; };
$nothing = 1;
}
or formatted so it stands out more as a "proper" "switch" statement:
SWITCH: {
/^abc/ && do {
$abc = 1;
last SWITCH;
};
/^def/ && do {
$def = 1;
last SWITCH;
};
/^xyz/ && do {
$xyz = 1;
last SWITCH;
};
$nothing = 1;
}
or
SWITCH: {
/^abc/ and $abc = 1, last SWITCH;
/^def/ and $def = 1, last SWITCH;
/^xyz/ and $xyz = 1, last SWITCH;
$nothing = 1;
}
or even, horrors,
if (/^abc/)
{ $abc = 1 }
elsif (/^def/)
{ $def = 1 }
elsif (/^xyz/)
{ $xyz = 1 }
else
{ $nothing = 1 }
A common idiom for a "switch" statement is to use "foreach"'s aliasing
to make a temporary assignment to $_ for convenient matching:
SWITCH: for ($where) {
/In Card Names/ && do { push @flags, '-e'; last; };
/Anywhere/ && do { push @flags, '-h'; last; };
/In Rulings/ && do { last; };
die "unknown value for form variable where: `$where'";
}
Another interesting approach to a switch statement is arrange for a
"do" block to return the proper value:
$amode = do {
if ($flag & O_RDONLY) { "r" } # XXX: isn't this 0?
elsif ($flag & O_WRONLY) { ($flag & O_APPEND) ? "a" : "w" }
elsif ($flag & O_RDWR) {
if ($flag & O_CREAT) { "w+" }
else { ($flag & O_APPEND) ? "a+" : "r+" }
}
};
Or
print do {
($flags & O_WRONLY) ? "write-only" :
($flags & O_RDWR) ? "read-write" :
"read-only";
};
Or if you are certain that all the "&&" clauses are true, you can use
something like this, which "switches" on the value of the
"HTTP_USER_AGENT" environment variable.
#!/usr/bin/perl
# pick out jargon file page based on browser
$dir = 'http://www.wins.uva.nl/~mes/jargon';
for ($ENV{HTTP_USER_AGENT}) {
$page = /Mac/ && 'm/Macintrash.html'
|| /Win(dows )?NT/ && 'e/evilandrude.html'
|| /Win|MSIE|WebTV/ && 'm/MicroslothWindows.html'
|| /Linux/ && 'l/Linux.html'
|| /HP-UX/ && 'h/HP-SUX.html'
|| /SunOS/ && 's/ScumOS.html'
|| 'a/AppendixB.html';
}
print "Location: $dir/$page\015\012\015\012";
That kind of switch statement only works when you know the "&&" clauses
will be true. If you don't, the previous "?:" example should be used.
You might also consider writing a hash of subroutine references instead
of synthesizing a "switch" statement.
Goto
Although not for the faint of heart, Perl does support a "goto" state-
ment. There are three forms: "goto"-LABEL, "goto"-EXPR, and
"goto"-&NAME. A loop's LABEL is not actually a valid target for a
"goto"; it's just the name of the loop.
The "goto"-LABEL form finds the statement labeled with LABEL and
resumes execution there. It may not be used to go into any construct
that requires initialization, such as a subroutine or a "foreach" loop.
It also can't be used to go into a construct that is optimized away.
It can be used to go almost anywhere else within the dynamic scope,
including out of subroutines, but it's usually better to use some other
construct such as "last" or "die". The author of Perl has never felt
the need to use this form of "goto" (in Perl, that is--C is another
matter).
The "goto"-EXPR form expects a label name, whose scope will be resolved
dynamically. This allows for computed "goto"s per FORTRAN, but isn't
necessarily recommended if you're optimizing for maintainability:
goto(("FOO", "BAR", "GLARCH")[$i]);
The "goto"-&NAME form is highly magical, and substitutes a call to the
named subroutine for the currently running subroutine. This is used by
"AUTOLOAD()" subroutines that wish to load another subroutine and then
pretend that the other subroutine had been called in the first place
(except that any modifications to @_ in the current subroutine are
propagated to the other subroutine.) After the "goto", not even
"caller()" will be able to tell that this routine was called first.
In almost all cases like this, it's usually a far, far better idea to
use the structured control flow mechanisms of "next", "last", or "redo"
instead of resorting to a "goto". For certain applications, the catch
and throw pair of "eval{}" and die() for exception processing can also
be a prudent approach.
PODs: Embedded Documentation
Perl has a mechanism for intermixing documentation with source code.
While it's expecting the beginning of a new statement, if the compiler
encounters a line that begins with an equal sign and a word, like this
=head1 Here There Be Pods!
Then that text and all remaining text up through and including a line
beginning with "=cut" will be ignored. The format of the intervening
text is described in perlpod.
This allows you to intermix your source code and your documentation
text freely, as in
=item snazzle($)
The snazzle() function will behave in the most spectacular
form that you can possibly imagine, not even excepting
cybernetic pyrotechnics.
=cut back to the compiler, nuff of this pod stuff!
sub snazzle($) {
my $thingie = shift;
.........
}
Note that pod translators should look at only paragraphs beginning with
a pod directive (it makes parsing easier), whereas the compiler actu-
ally knows to look for pod escapes even in the middle of a paragraph.
This means that the following secret stuff will be ignored by both the
compiler and the translators.
$a=3;
=secret stuff
warn "Neither POD nor CODE!?"
=cut back
print "got $a\n";
You probably shouldn't rely upon the "warn()" being podded out forever.
Not all pod translators are well-behaved in this regard, and perhaps
the compiler will become pickier.
One may also use pod directives to quickly comment out a section of
code.
Plain Old Comments (Not!)
Perl can process line directives, much like the C preprocessor. Using
this, one can control Perl's idea of filenames and line numbers in
error or warning messages (especially for strings that are processed
with "eval()"). The syntax for this mechanism is the same as for most
C preprocessors: it matches the regular expression
# example: '# line 42 "new_filename.plx"'
/^\# \s*
line \s+ (\d+) \s*
(?:\s("?)([^"]+)\2)? \s*
$/x
with $1 being the line number for the next line, and $3 being the
optional filename (specified with or without quotes).
There is a fairly obvious gotcha included with the line directive:
Debuggers and profilers will only show the last source line to appear
at a particular line number in a given file. Care should be taken not
to cause line number collisions in code you'd like to debug later.
Here are some examples that you should be able to type into your com-
mand shell:
% perl
# line 200 "bzzzt"
# the `#' on the previous line must be the first char on line
die 'foo';
__END__
foo at bzzzt line 201.
% perl
# line 200 "bzzzt"
eval qq[\n#line 2001 ""\ndie 'foo']; print $@;
__END__
foo at - line 2001.
% perl
eval qq[\n#line 200 "foo bar"\ndie 'foo']; print $@;
__END__
foo at foo bar line 200.
% perl
# line 345 "goop"
eval "\n#line " . __LINE__ . ' "' . __FILE__ ."\"\ndie 'foo'";
print $@;
__END__
foo at goop line 345.
perl v5.8.6 2004-11-05 PERLSYN(1)
