You declare an ordinary indexed array by giving it a name and prefixing
it with a @
Values are assigned to arrays in the usual fashion:
@array = (1,2,3); @copy_array = @array; @one_element = 1; # not an error but create the array (1)
Arrays can also be referenced in the literal list, for example:
@array1 = (4,5,6); @array2 = (1,2,3, @array1, 7,8);
results in the elements of array1 being inserted in the appropriate parts of the list.
Therefore after the above operations
@array2 = (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)
This means Lists cannot contain other lists elements only scalars allowed.
Elements of arrays are indexed by index:
$array1[1] = $array2[3];
Assign ``third'' element of array2 to ``first'' element of array1.
Each array element is a scalar so we reference each array element with
$.
BIG WARNING:
Array indexing starts from 0 in Perl (like C).
So
@array = (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8);
The index $array[0] refers to 1 and $array[5] refers to 6.
If you assign a scalar to an array the scalar gets assigned the length of the array, i.e:
@array2 = (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8); $length = @array2; # length = 8 $length = $array2[3]; # length gets ``third'' value # in array i.e 4