Arrays and Hashes

Array Element Access

• Because of the rich collection of array operators, it may not be necessary to ever address a particular scalar contained in an array.
• Remember array variables are an ordered list.
• Array variables are indexed from zero (not one).
• When accessing a particular array element, you are accessing a scalar, not an array, so you use the $ instead of the @ symbol with the array name.
• Example:
  

  @First = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5); 
  print "$First[0] $First[1] $First[2]\n"; 
  ==> 1 2 3 
  

• If you wish to simultaneously access several array elements, you may specify a collection of indexes. This is called taking a slice of the array. Note that this will return an array, not a scalar, so we are back to the @ symbol instead of the $ symbol.
• Example:
  

  @First = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5); 
  @Second = @First[1,2,3]; 
  print "@Second\n"; 
  ==> 2 3 4