Comparison Chart for Perl programmers

grep v map v sort

Most languages support lists and / or arrays - and that includes Perl. In Perl, though, you can use functions such as grep, map, sort and reverse to operate on lists as a whole rather than having to loop through members of the list cell by cell.

function	desciption of action	element count	elements altered?	Output element order
grep	Filters incoming elements and copies those which match a criteria to the output list	"n" elements in, 0 to "n" elements out	outgoing elements are exact copies of incoming elements	outgoing elements are in same order as incoming elements
map	Performs an operation on each incoming element and writes the result to the output list	"n" elements in, "n" elements out	outgoing elements are the result of an operation on incoming elements	outgoing elements are in same order as incoming elements
sort	Re-orders the incoming elements and writes the result to the output list	"n" elements in, "n" elements out	outgoing elements are exact copies of incoming elements	outgoing elements are in a different order to the incoming elements
reverse	Writes the incoming elements to the output list in reverse order	"n" elements in, "n" elements out	outgoing elements are exact copies of incoming elements	outgoing elements are "back to front" from the incoming elements

It's a common misconception that grep is used only to filter incoming members against a regular expression - it CAN be (and that's the most common use and how it got its name), but it can also be used to perform another task, based on each member of the incoming list in turn being put into $_. The following sample program shows two uses of grep and two of map to illustrate the comments just made and parts of the table above.



# antonia Perl XML PHP Tcl/Tk MySQL

# barbara Tcl/Tk ASP Ruby Java

# cherry Perl Java Ruby MySQL



open (FH,"requests.xyz") or die "No requests.xyz file\n";

@stuff = grep (/^.[aeiou]/,<FH>); # Only want lines with vowel as 2nd letter



@m1 = grep((split)>5,@stuff);  # Filter to remove short lines

print @m1;

print "============================\n";

@m1 = map(uc,@m1); # Change all lines to all upper case

print @m1;

print "============================\n";

@m3 = map(length()."\n",@m1); # Produce a list of line lengths

print @m3;

I ran this against a test data file of 52 lines (I've pasted the first three lines into the sample code above) and here are the results - you'll see that the only lines left by grep are those which comprise over 5 space separated fields, and have a lower case vowel as the second letter.



[localhost:~/dplp] graham% perl nq

hazel PHP Python Perl Ruby ASP

leane PHP Python ASP Perl Java

margaret XML Perl Ruby MySQL Tcl/Tk

petra XML Tcl/Tk ASP Perl Ruby

xena  Java Perl PHP ASP XML

barry Python XML Java Perl PHP

============================

HAZEL PHP PYTHON PERL RUBY ASP

LEANE PHP PYTHON ASP PERL JAVA

MARGARET XML PERL RUBY MYSQL TCL/TK

PETRA XML TCL/TK ASP PERL RUBY

XENA  JAVA PERL PHP ASP XML

BARRY PYTHON XML JAVA PERL PHP

============================

31

31

36

31

28

31

[localhost:~/dplp] graham%

There are further examples of the use of functions such as grep (and push and pop and others too) available under our training note pages.
(written 2004-12-04, updated 2006-06-05) 2304

Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles

P208 - Perl - Lists
  [3939] Lots of ways of doing the same thing in Perl - list iteration - (2012-12-03)
  [3906] Taking the lead, not the dog, for a walk. - (2012-10-28)
  [3870] Writing more maintainable Perl - naming fields from your data records - (2012-09-25)
  [3669] Stepping through a list (or an array) in reverse order - (2012-03-23)
  [3548] Dark mornings, dog update, and Python and Lua courses before Christmas - (2011-12-10)
  [3400] $ is atomic and % and @ are molecular - Perl - (2011-08-20)
  [2996] Copying - duplicating data, or just adding a name? Perl and Python compared - (2010-10-12)
  [2833] Fresh Perl Teaching Examples - part 2 of 3 - (2010-06-27)
  [2813] Iterating over a Perl list and changing all items - (2010-06-15)
  [2484] Finding text and what surrounds it - contextual grep - (2009-10-30)
  [2295] The dog is not in trouble - (2009-07-17)
  [2226] Revision / Summary of lists - Perl - (2009-06-10)
  [2067] Perl - lists do so much more than arrays - (2009-03-05)
  [1918] Perl Socket Programming Examples - (2008-12-02)
  [1917] Out of memory during array extend - Perl - (2008-12-02)
  [1828] Perl - map to process every member of a list (array) - (2008-10-09)
  [1703] Perl ... adding to a list - end, middle, start - (2008-07-09)
  [1316] Filtering and altering Perl lists with grep and map - (2007-08-23)
  [1304] Last elements in a Perl or Python list - (2007-08-16)
  [968] Perl - a list or a hash? - (2006-12-06)
  [928] C++ and Perl - why did they do it THAT way? - (2006-11-16)
  [773] Breaking bread - (2006-06-22)
  [762] Huge data files - what happened earlier? - (2006-06-15)
  [622] Queues and barrel rolls in Perl - (2006-02-24)
  [560] The fencepost problem - (2006-01-10)
  [463] Splitting the difference - (2005-10-13)
  [355] Context in Perl - (2005-06-22)
  [240] Conventional restraints removed - (2005-03-09)
  [230] Course sizes - beware of marketing statistics - (2005-02-27)
  [28] Perl for breakfast - (2004-08-25)

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