Data commit

Task/Array-length/Perl/array-length-1.pl

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+my @array = qw "apple orange banana", 4, 42;
+
+scalar @array;      #  5
+0 + @arrray;        #  5
+'' . @array;        # "5"
+my $elems = @array; # $elems = 5
+
+scalar @{  [1,2,3]  }; # [1,2,3] is a reference which is already a scalar
+
+my $array_ref = \@array; # a reference
+scalar @$array_ref;
+
+
+# using subroutine prototypes, not generally recommended
+# and not usually what you think they are
+sub takes_a_scalar ($) { my ($a) = @_; return $a }
+
+takes_a_scalar @array;
+
+# the built-ins can also act like they have prototypes

Task/Array-length/Perl/array-length-2.pl

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+length '' . @array; # 1
+length      @array; # 1
+
+print '0.', scalar @array, 'e', length @array, "\n"; # 0.5e1
+
+@array = 1..123;
+print '0.', scalar @array, 'e', length @array, "\n"; # 0.123e3
+
+print 'the length of @array is on the order of ';
+print 10 ** (length( @array )-1); # 100
+print " elements long\n";