This and other RFCs are available on the web at http://dev.perl.org/rfc/ =head1 TITLE Make length(@array) work =head1 VERSION Maintainer: Nathan Torkington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sep 12 2000 Last Modified: Sep 15 2000 Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Number: 212 Version: 2 Status: Retired =head1 ABSTRACT length(@foo) should return the number of elements in @foo. =head1 DESCRIPTION Presently length() has a prototype of ($) which means it coerces its argument into scalar context. Many newbies think of the number of elements in an array as its "length", and try to use this function. Instead of the size of the array, they get a rough base-10 logarityhm of the number of elements. I propose to make length() return the number of elements in the array it is passed, if its first argument begins with @. =head1 IMPLEMENTATION The optimizer could replace length @array with scalar(@array) The perl526 converter could replace length @array with length scalar(@array) =head1 REFERENCES perlfunc for documentation on length() function
