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The number of elements in an array can be determined either by evaluating the array in scalar context or with the help of the $# sigil. The latter gives the index of the last element in the array, not the number of elements. The expressions scalar(@array) and ($#array + 1) are equivalent.
Perl Data Language (abbreviated PDL) is a set of free software array programming extensions to the Perl programming language. PDL extends the data structures built into Perl, to include large multidimensional arrays , and adds functionality to manipulate those arrays as vector objects.
The documentation is bundled with Perl in its own format, known as Plain Old Documentation (pod). Some distributions, such as Strawberry Perl, include the documentation in HTML, PDF, and pod formats. perldoc is also the name of the Perl command that provides "access to all the documentation that comes with Perl", from the command line.
Folds can be regarded as consistently replacing the structural components of a data structure with functions and values. Lists, for example, are built up in many functional languages from two primitives: any list is either an empty list, commonly called nil ([]), or is constructed by prefixing an element in front of another list, creating what is called a cons node ( Cons(X1,Cons(X2,Cons ...
In Perl, foreach (which is equivalent to the shorter for) can be used to traverse elements of a list. The expression which denotes the collection to loop over is evaluated in list-context and each item of the resulting list is, in turn, aliased to the loop variable.
The basis behind array programming and thinking is to find and exploit the properties of data where individual elements are similar or adjacent. Unlike object orientation which implicitly breaks down data to its constituent parts (or scalar quantities), array orientation looks to group data and apply a uniform handling.
As of Perl 5.10, PCRE is also available as a replacement for Perl's default regular-expression engine through the re::engine::PCRE module. The library can be built on Unix, Windows, and several other environments.
This includes Perl itself, nearly all publicly released modules, many scripts, most design documents, many articles on Perl.com and other Perl-related web sites, and the Parrot virtual machine. Pod is rarely read in the raw, although it is designed to be readable without the assistance of a formatting tool.