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=head1 TITLE
Open-ended slices
=head1 VERSION
Maintainer: Simon Cozens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 24 Sep 2000
Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Number: 282
Version: 1
Status: Developing
=head1 ABSTRACT
The dreaded C<@array[$foo...]> rears its ugly head again.
=head1 DESCRIPTION
How many times have you wanted B<just> the last two return values from a
function? And how many times have you got frustrated that you can't work
out how many things there are in a list and you have to decant it to an
array:
@thingy = function()
for (@thingy[3..$#thingy]) { ... }
Horrible, isn't it? People want something better.
I thought about it last year or so, and produced a couple of patches. It
seemed then that the right syntax was not, for instance:
(function())[3...-1]
because sometimes you want C<$x..$y> to return the empty list, but
actually:
(function())[3...]
(Or C<[3..]>. It doesn't matter.)
Someone else on Perl5-Porters wanted this recently too, so it isn't just
me.
=head1 IMPLEMENTATION
It's new syntax, so it isn't going to break anything, and I did produce
patches against 5.6, so it is possible. It's a question of adding
another rule to the grammar, which flags that the slice should be
computed at run time.
=head1 REFERENCES
None.
