Hi all,

I was reading through UR coloumn by Randal in ww.stonehenge.com. I
cam across the Schwartzian method which I find extremely difficult to
understand even after the explanation given by him.Please help me
understand the concepts.

1)
[at] data = <>; # read data
foreach ( [at] data) {
($name,$score) = split; # get score
$score{$_} = $score; # record it
}

I guess $_ has the instantaneous data from [at] data. Am I correct?

2)

[at] pairs = map {
($name, $score) = split;
[ $_, $score ];
} [at] data;
What is $_ in the ablove code?
Randal says "I build a two-element anonymous list from the
$score and the original value $_". Can somebody help me to understand
what he means?


3)
print
map { $_->[0] }
sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] }
map { [$_, (split)[1] ] }
<>;
What is $_->[0] all about?


regards,
jis

In article <1181665783.587223.115180 [at] a26g2000pre.googlegroups.com>, jis
<jismagic [at] gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I was reading through UR coloumn by Randal in ww.stonehenge.com. I
> cam across the Schwartzian method which I find extremely difficult to
> understand even after the explanation given by him.Please help me
> understand the concepts.
>
> 1)
> [at] data = <>; # read data
> foreach ( [at] data) {
> ($name,$score) = split; # get score
> $score{$_} = $score; # record it
> }
>
> I guess $_ has the instantaneous data from [at] data. Am I correct?

Yes. $_ is the default variable for many Perl operations if an explicit
variable is not present.

>
> 2)
>
> [at] pairs = map {
> ($name, $score) = split;
> [ $_, $score ];
> } [at] data;
> What is $_ in the ablove code?

$_ is aliased to each element of [at] data in turn within the block of the
map statement.

> Randal says "I build a two-element anonymous list from the
> $score and the original value $_". Can somebody help me to understand
> what he means?

The construct [ $_, $score ] creates a list of two elements and returns
a reference to that list. The list is "anonymous" because it is not
assigned to a named variable, e.g. such as the variable [at] list in "my
[at] list = ($_,$score);". There will be one such list for each element of
[at] data. The references to all of these anonymous lists will be stored in
the array [at] pairs.

>
>
> 3)
> print
> map { $_->[0] }
> sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] }
> map { [$_, (split)[1] ] }
> <>;
> What is $_->[0] all about?

$_ is a scalar variable that contains a reference to a list. $_->[0] is
the first element of that list. It is equivalent to ${$_}[0], but
perhaps a little more readable.

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