I'm running a Perl Course this week ... a small group, so we can look at some very interesting constructs that I wouldn't normally cover / consider on a public course.

Comment out a block of code with an impossible condition

if (1 == 0) { ....

This is a great way to temporarily comment out a whole block of your code if you want to supress it for a while.

Toggle a variable between two values

$n = 3 - $n;

If $n was one before the statement, it becomes 2, and vice versa. The constant you use (3 in this case) is simply the sum of the two values you wish to toggle between.

Output an integer in binary

printf ("%b",$value);

sprintf and printf in Perl support the "b" formatter for binary - in addition to the more common "o" for Octal, "d" for decimal and "x" for hexadecimal.

All of these techniques together ...

# Some Perl Tricks
$n = 1;
if (1 == 0) {
  print "This is a comment";
  print "And so is this"; }
for ($k=1;$k<20;$k+=3) {
  $n = 3 - $n;
  printf ("%05b %2d %2d\n",$k,$n,$k); }

And when we run that:

grahamellis$ perl ppa
00001 2 1
00100 1 4
00111 2 7
01010 1 10
01101 2 13
10000 1 16
10011 2 19
grahamellis$
(written 2007-08-21 13:52:46)

 P103 - Perl - Variables and Operations
P202 - Perl Fundamentals
P107 - Perl - Formatting Text
P207 - Perl - File Handling

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Filtering and altering Perl lists with grep and map
Two years of campaigning for a train service
Business travel by train in the USA
Tratum Technologies
Some one line Perl tips and techniques
What do people look for on a hotel web site?
Callbacks - a more complex code sandwich
Dates for Easter - 2008 to 2015
Good to be home
Troy, up state New York
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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

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