Neo, The primary difference is that, the first one is an array of 3 elements and second is an array containing one element which in turn is a reference (an anonymous array).
This is probably best explained by an example. [code] use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper qw/Dumper/; my @a1 = ( 1, 2, 3 ); print '@a1: ' . Dumper( \@a1 ); print 'The length of the array @a1 is : ', scalar @a1, "\n"; my @a2 = [ 1, 2, 3 ]; print '@a2: ' . Dumper( \@a2 ); print 'The length of the array @a2 is : ', scalar @a2, "\n"; my $a3 = [ 1, 2, 3 ]; print '$a3: ' . Dumper( $a3 ); print 'The length of the array $a3 is : ', scalar @$a3, "\n"; my @a4 = ( 1, 2, 3 ); my $a4 = \@a4; print '$a4: ' . Dumper( $a4 ); print 'The length of the array $a4 is : ', scalar @a4, "\n"; [/code] [output] @a1: $VAR1 = [ 1, 2, 3 ]; The length of the array @a1 is : 3 @a2: $VAR1 = [ [ 1, 2, 3 ] ]; The length of the array @a2 is : 1 $a3: $VAR1 = [ 1, 2, 3 ]; The length of the array $a3 is : 3 $a4: $VAR1 = [ 1, 2, 3 ]; The length of the array $a4 is : 3 [/output] best, Shaji ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________________________ From: Neo Anderson <neo_in_mat...@msn.com> To: beginners@perl.org Sent: Tuesday, 8 January 2013 7:03 AM Subject: What is the difference between () and [] syntax for array? I think there are two ways to declare an array: my @a1 = (1, 2, 3);my @a2 = [1, 2, 3]; What is the difference?
