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   Mark Gardner (mjgardner@social.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 19-Jul-2024 02:47:10 JST Mark Gardner

   • mhd
   • drmorr

   @mhd @drmorr If you want or need to be verbose, you can say the following in #Perl to get the number of elements in an array:

   ```
   scalar @array
   ```

   What that does is force an expression into a scalar context.

   But a lot of the time you *don’t* need to do that. For instance, this will do the right thing:

   ```
   $length = @array;
   ```

   As well as this:

   ```
   say 'There are four lights' if @lights == 4;
   ```

   More on context here: https://perldoc.perl.org/perldata#Context

   • Embed this notice
     Mark Gardner (mjgardner@social.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 19-Jul-2024 02:47:10 JST Mark Gardner

     in reply to

     • mhd
     • drmorr

     @mhd @drmorr I love the #Perl #programming language because in so many places it obeys the Principle Of Least Surprise—but *only* if you’re a normal person and not a stuck-up Real Programmer.

     A normal person says, “Of course I can check how many things I have (elements in an array) by comparing to a number.”

     A “Real Programmer” throws a fit because arrays and numbers are not the same thing, dammit, and their job is to explain to the computer how to do *its* job, dammit.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.