HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: merlyn@ora.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: In 5.0, are we gonna get...
Date: 18 Dec 92 17:04:48 GMT
Article-I.D.: romulus.MERLYN.92Dec18090444
	<2B2D2498.874E@tct.com> <7246288358-314904@dec4.wu-wien.ac.at>
Organization: Stonehenge Consulting Services; Portland, Oregon, USA

In article <7246288358-314904@dec4.wu-wien.ac.at> neumann@dec4.wu-wien.ac.at (Gustaf Neumann) writes:
   how about 

	       $sum = eval join('+ ',1,34,$x,45,-8,0.1);

   ok, the string conversion could be avoided, but you can do it now...

if $x is a string, that's a nasty conversion. :-)

eval join (" ","print",'"Just',another,Perl,'hacker,"')
--
Randal L. Schwartz / Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095
merlyn@ora.com (semi-permanent) merlyn@reed.edu (for newsreading only)
factoid: "Portland, Oregon, home of the California Raisins and Lone-Star Beer!"
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: karl@NeoSoft.com (Karl Lehenbauer)
Subject: Re: programming challenge
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 22:25:10 GMT

<1992Dec14.114044.22303@cs.ruu.nl> <1992Dec14.185822.7058@wdl.loral.com>
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900

In article <1992Dec14.185822.7058@wdl.loral.com> mab@wdl39.wdl.loral.com 
(Mark A Biggar) writes:
>but of course this doesn't really solve the 'Goofy' problem which doesn't
>have a general solution even with the addition of dictionary lookup because
>word pairs like 'met' vs 'meet'.  That problem looks like it take a full
>English understanding AI to solve.

What?  Forgive me, but for the guys' case aren't the number of overstrikes
constant?  So ooo => o and oooooo => oo.
-- 
-- Email info@NeoSoft.com for info on getting interactive Internet access.
"Turn on your hot tub by email now.  Ask me how."
From: holland@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Rich Holland)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Followup:  Suggested reading
Date: 16 Dec 1992 18:45:56 -0600
Organization: Kansas State University
NNTP-Posting-Host: matt.ksu.ksu.edu

About a week ago, I posted the following to comp.lang.perl:

] Anyone have any suggestions about which books/articles/papers I should be
] reading as a beginning perl programmer?  E-mail please, and I'll summarize
] to comp.lang.perl in a week or so.

I only got one response, from stevel@autodesk.com:

> The best reference around is:
>
> Programming Perl
> Larry Wall and Randal Schwartz
> O'Reilly & Associates
> 632 Petaluma Ave.
> Sebastopol, Ca, 95472
> (800)338-6887
>
> ISBN 0-937175-64-1

-- 
Rich Holland              | INTERNET: holland@matt.ksu.ksu.edu
100 Jardine Terr, Apt A7  | BITNET  : holland@ksuvm
Manhattan, KS  66502-3357 | UUCP    : ...!rutgers!matt.ksu.ksu.edu!holland
char*p="char*p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: msolda@lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu (M Solda)
Subject: reading c-isam files with perl
Keywords: c-isam
Reply-To: msolda@lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu
Organization: Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 15:50:54 GMT

has anbody been able to read in c-isam files with perl, using either a
general routine or extension?  i would be very interested in knowing about
either.

thanks.

msolda
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: tye@spillman.uucp (E. Tye McQueen)
Subject: Re: Perl-side globbing (was Re: Perl Shell...)
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 08:53:31 GMT
Organization: Spillman Data Systems

[my simulation of <*>]

Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM> writes:
)I've always used this...
)[Tom's simulation of <*>]

Much simpler, probably faster, gives you the alternative of using
"regular expression globbing" but doesn't handle \-quoting or /'s
inside {}.  I don't use \-quoting much but I use /'s in {} quite
often.  I don't think these can be changed without radical
modifications.

Of course, my glob.pl has its own idiosyncracies (for example,
doesn't handle ' or " quoting and ~{fred,joe}/.pro* works but
one ksh I tried doesn't handle that).  I was hoping with a bit
of work any meaningful differences between my glob.pl and csh
globbing could be resolved and Perl could have *safe* globbing
without any loss of functionality.

glob2re.pl (which I wrote much before glob.pl) handles % for
"any number of subdirectories" (something I really miss from VMS
wildcards) but glob2re is "passive" (you have to use something
like "find" to generate the file names and glob2re tells you
which ones match).  But my glob.pl never would have happened if
glob2re.pl wasn't lying around.

I included \-quoting for completeness but now that I'm trying
to reproduce csh-globbing I guess ' and " may need to be
supported as well.

After posting I realized that I didn't properly note that my
routines don't do any sorting.  I intentionally left it out
since it is so easy to include it when you want it and impossible
to remove it when you don't (I just had a problem where I needed
to find out which directories had subdirectory entries *after*
the entry for a symbolic link -- "find.pl" was skipping directories
because our system supports symbolic links but Perl was build on
a binary-compatible system that doesn't have an lstat call).

I wonder what will happen if I build an lstat-capable Perl and
run it on a binary-compatible system that doesn't have lstat.

Back to sorting.  I think I'll have to rename glob() to rawglob()
and make glob() just "sort &rawglob()" so most get what they
expect but you can skip the sorting when you want.

 tye@spillman.com                         Tye McQueen, E.
----------------------------------------------------------
 Nothing is obvious unless you are overlooking something. 
----------------------------------------------------------
From: faigin@aero.org (Daniel P. Faigin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Perl IV & V incompatibilities?
Date: 17 Dec 92 13:49:10
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: soldan.aero.org
In-reply-to: lezz@merlin.dev.cdx.mot.com's message of Thu, 17 Dec 1992 17:54:20 GMT

On Thu, 17 Dec 1992 17:54:20 GMT, lezz@merlin.dev.cdx.mot.com (Lezz Giles)
said: 
> I'm getting a little bit scared about Perl V - I have lots of Perl IV code
> and I'm scared that it'll all have to be rewritten when I move to Perl V.

I'm sure it won't be worse than the transition from Perl 0 to Perl 1 was. But
then, Larry, Mark, and I were the only users of Perl 0, back in our blacker
(so to speak :-)) days. Perl 1 was the first version released to the net,
after Larry had moved over to RandD at SDC (hence, the machine name, sdcrdcf).

One of these days, when my beard gets more grizzed, I'll tell you children the
story :-)

Daniel
--
[W]:The Aerospace Corp. M1/055 * POB 92957 * LA, CA 90009-2957 * 310/336-8228
[Email]:faigin@aerospace.aero.org              [Vmail]:310/336-5454 Box#13149
		    "And as they say, the rest is compost"
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: mcook@fendahl.dev.cdx.mot.com (Michael Cook)
Subject: system() vs exec()
Organization: Motorola Codex, Canton, Massachusetts
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 19:10:50 GMT

The manpage says this:

          system LIST
                  Does exactly the same thing as "exec LIST" except that a
                  fork is done first, and the parent process waits for the
                  child process to complete.

This is not completely accurate.  There is an important difference between
system() and exec() that the manpage doesn't seem to mention: system() ignores
SIGINT and SIGQUIT while it is waiting for the child to finish.

This means that a Perl script that use system() can be difficult to interrupt.
For example:

  foreach (@files)
  {
    system("cp $_ $dest/$_");
    $exit = $? if $?;
  }
  exit($exit);

If you try to ^C this script, it will simply start a new iteration of the
foreach loop (most likely).

If you write the script using fork, exec and waitpid, when you hit ^C it does
what you'd expect: it dies.

At best, this is a bug in the manpage.  At worst, it is a bug in perl.

Michael.

P.S. 
Hey, Larry: Will Perl 5.0 be able to do my taxes for me? :-)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall)
Subject: Re: unpack and shift idiom?
Organization: NetLabs, Inc.
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 02:25:38 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.180058.15351@bcars6a8.bnr.ca> jsparkes@bcars68a.bnr.ca (Jeff Sparkes) writes:
: I'm reading binary data from a network stream.  I've accumulated the data in
: a variable called $data, and am taking it apart in chunks.  The code
: looks like:
: 	@output = unpack("L4S6", $data);
: 	$data = substr($data, 28);
: 	@names = unpack("A20", $data);
: 	???
: 
: I'm concerned by the need to use a constant as the arg to substr, especially
: since I calculated it wrong the first time, and it took me a while to find.
: This gets especially hairy when I pull strings out of the data stream, since
: I don't know how many bytes to skip after unpacking A strings because some
: stripping occurs.
: 
: Please tell me I'm missing something!

Perhaps you just need to make unpack do the counting for you.

	@output = 0..9;		# make sure elements exist
	(@output[0..9], $names, $remainder) = unpack("L4 S6 A20 a*", $data);

A20 does do stripping, as you say, but the unpack will continue unpacking
after the full 20 bytes, even if what is returned is shorter.

Larry
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
Subject: Re: Perl & manipulating large texts
Organization: Mount Holyoke College
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 06:59:39 GMT

Correction to my previous post:

In article <BzF1Cn.M1t@mtholyoke.edu> jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz) writes:
>  $* = 1;
>  while (/$pat/) {
>	$match = $&;
>	$_ = $_;       <<<<========= should of course be: $_ = $' 
>	&do_something_with($match);
>	$pat = &next_pat();
>   }
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Subject: In search of good idioms.
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 14:24:52 GMT

I'm a newbie perl-plucker.  I'm working through some
exercises I've set myself, in an effort to develop
some taste in matters of perl style.  Current problem:
write a permute program.  Such a program would, for
example, when presented with input

	permute a1 zebra third

generate output something like

	a1 zebra third
	a1 third zebra
	zebra a1 third
	zebra third a1
	third a1 zebra
	third zebra a1

I don't like any of the solutions I've conceived, and
seek the judgment of those with more experience.  My
current summary of the situation goes something like
this:

The natural expressions of this problem involve an
abstract data type, "collection of (sub)permutations",
or its proceduralization by way of a parametrized re-
cursion.  Procedure calls with more than one formal
parameter look gross in perl (don't they?  Is there a
way to handle them without clutter?), and there is no
intrinsic support for data abstraction.  Therefore,
all perl solutions of this problem look clunky.

Is this true?  Is there some slick way to use associative
arrays to solve this?  Have I inadvertently hit on a
well-known demo that's available on some ftp site I
haven't yet visited?  I suspect that working through this
to some conclusion will help me better understand the
<<esprit de perl>>; thanks for any assistance.

I'm also having problems with wafe that the FAQ doesn't
answer, but I'll save that for another time ...
-- 

Cameron Laird
claird@Neosoft.com (claird%Neosoft.com@uunet.uu.net)	+1 713 267 7966
claird@litwin.com (claird%litwin.com@uunet.uu.net)  	+1 713 996 8546
From: merlyn@ora.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Thanks to all of you that bought camel books!
Date: 13 Dec 92 23:55:50 GMT
Article-I.D.: romulus.MERLYN.92Dec13155546
	<MERLYN.92Dec13115140@romulus.reed.edu> <neeri.724283380@iis>
Organization: Stonehenge Consulting Services; Portland, Oregon, USA

In article <neeri.724283380@iis> neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher) writes:
   >There have been some preliminary discussions with the people at
   >O'Reilly about videotaping me teaching a class based on "Learning
   >Perl" and making that available.  I'm not sure I'm ready for *that*
   >much frontside-of-camera work yet.

   Somehow I feel that Marlon Brando would be ideally suited to this role...

   "I'm writing you a script you can't refuse"

... or understand? :-)

$_ = "Just another Marlon Brando,"; s/Marlon Brando/Perl hacker/; print
--
Randal L. Schwartz / Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095
merlyn@ora.com (semi-permanent) merlyn@reed.edu (for newsreading only)
factoid: "Portland, Oregon, home of the California Raisins and Lone-Star Beer!"
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: barr@pop.psu.edu (David Barr)
Subject: Re: Thanks to all of you that bought camel books!
Organization: Penn State Population Research Institute
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 20:09:31 GMT

In article <MERLYN.92Dec13115140@romulus.reed.edu> merlyn@ora.com (Randal L. Schwartz) writes:
>(Coming soon... "Perl: the Motion Picture" :-)

And the sequel: "The Perl Hacker Strikes Back"  The 8th in a 12 part
trilogy about the adventures of young Larry Wallker and his quest to
use the Source to defeat the Evil Csh Empire.   :-)

--Dave
-- 
System Administrator, Population Research Institute    barr@pop.psu.edu
Emacs is a fine operating system, but I still prefer UNIX. - Tom Christiansen
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM>
Subject: Re: Delete until pattern match
Originator: tchrist@pixel.convex.com
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 01:13:24 GMT
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Colorado Springs, CO
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

From the keyboard of hans@symbas.lind.no:
:I have some files in which I want to delete all lines until a
:certain pattern match. I know a couple of awkward ways to do it,
:( using an array as temporary storage etc.) 
:but is there a quicker and more elegant solution ?

perl -i.bak -ne '(1../pattern/) || print'

--tom
-- 
    Tom Christiansen      tchrist@convex.com      convex!tchrist
        echo "Hmmm...you don't have Berkeley networking in libc.a..."
        echo "but the Wollongong group seems to have hacked it in."
            --Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: fuat@news.ans.net (Fuat C. Baran)
Subject: array of file descriptors
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 17:12:42 GMT
Organization: Advanced Network & Services, Inc.

Is there a way to store file descriptors (from an open()) in an array?
I would like to open a set of files, store the open file descriptors
in an associative array keyed by filename and be able to multiplex
output to one of the files in a loop where for each line of output I'm
given a filename.  I'd like to check if $filehandles{$filename} is
defined and if not first open the file.

Thanks in advance.  Apologies if this is a FAQ.

						--Fuat

-- 
Advanced Network & Services, Inc.		fuat@ans.net
100 Clearbrook Road				914-789-5328
Elmsford, NY 10523				914-789-5310 (Fax)
From: merlyn@ora.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: nfinger
Date: 14 Dec 92 21:15:24 GMT
Article-I.D.: romulus.MERLYN.92Dec14131512
Organization: Stonehenge Consulting Services; Portland, Oregon, USA

In article <1736@rwja.umdnj.edu> majidi@rwja.umdnj.edu (Masoud Majidi) writes:
   I appreciate if someone would send me 'nfinger' (from the camel book)
   This would save a lot of typing.

AS it says in teh FAQ and in the book, all of the examples from the
Camel book are available on ftp.uu.net:/nutshell (or something like
that... I don't have my camel with me).

There.  Saved you a *lot* of typing. :-)

print "Just another Perl [book] hacker,"
--
Randal L. Schwartz / Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095
merlyn@ora.com (semi-permanent) merlyn@reed.edu (for newsreading only)
factoid: "Portland, Oregon, home of the California Raisins and Lone-Star Beer!"
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM>
Subject: Re: In 5.0, are we gonna get...
Originator: tchrist@pixel.convex.com
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 16:12:34 GMT
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Colorado Springs, CO
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

From the keyboard of mjeffery@reed.edu (Mark Jefferys):
:Will we see:
:
:1) an equivalent of lisp's mapcar?  For an instance:
:
:	map(/(\d+)/, "asdf 23fjk4", "qwerty", "123 ")
:
:   would return ("23", "4", "123").

Usually grep works like mapcar; you could this:

    grep (push(@retlist, /(\d+)/g), "asdf 23fjk4", "qwerty", "123 ")

I'd like to use

    grep(/(\d+)/g, "asdf 23fjk4", "qwerty", "123 ")

but that doesn't work for two reasons:

    1) i haven't been able to tickle grep's expr into an array context
    2) it returns the original elt, not the expr result

--tom
-- 
    Tom Christiansen      tchrist@convex.com      convex!tchrist
    You know, by the time you get some with all this, the "Swiss Army
    Chainsaw" is going to be more like a Swiss Army Tactical Nuke....  :-)
        --Brandon Allbery on perl in <1991Feb21.002412.20045@NCoast.ORG>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: mcook@fendahl.dev.cdx.mot.com (Michael Cook)
Subject: Re: Removing duplicate array members. How?
Organization: Motorola Codex, Canton, Massachusetts
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 17:42:01 GMT

serickso@ub.d.umn.edu (Scott Erickson) writes:

>  I am trying to remove duplicate members from an array.

To me, that always spells "associative array".  If your array already exists,
you can uniquify it by doing this:

  undef %b;
  for (@a) { %b{$_} = 1; }
  @a = keys %b;

Or this:

  undef %already;
  @a = grep(!$already{$_}++, @a);

Better would be to keep the list uniqued as you are building it.  Instead of
doing something like

  push(@a,$name)

do this:

  $a{$name}=1

Michael.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: mcook@fendahl.dev.cdx.mot.com (Michael Cook)
Subject: Re: Testing if a file is closed?
Organization: Motorola Codex, Canton, Massachusetts
Distribution: comp
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 17:22:19 GMT

piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum) writes:

>>>>>> mcook@fendahl.dev.cdx.mot.com (Michael Cook) (MC) writes:

>MC> glewis@pcocd2.intel.com (Glenn M. Lewis - ICD ~) writes:

>>	I'm afraid I can't figure out from the book or reference guide
>>how to test whether or not a file is closed.  Sorry if this is a silly
>>question.

>>	Here is my situation...  Some other machine is writing into a
>>directory that my Perl script is scanning for files.  My script needs
>>to know when the other machine has closed the file after it finishes
>>writing to it.  I have zero control over the other machine, so I can't
>>make it create any other synchronizing files, such as "file.lock" and
>>then removing it when finished.  I must determine in my script when
>>the file in question is complete and closed to writing.  Is this
>>possible from Perl?

>MC> Whether it is possible is dependent on your operating system.  In
>MC> general, I don't think Unixes will let you know whether some other
>MC> process has a file open.

>The way this should be done is that the PRODUCERS of the files should
>create a temp file first, on the same disk partition, and when the file is
>complete and closed, rename it so that the spooler will recognize it.

Yes, that's a reasonable solution ...except that Glenn originally said this:

>>I have zero control over the other machine, so I can't make it create any
>>other synchronizing files,

Michael.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
From: lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall)
Subject: Re: Perl IV & V incompatibilities?
Organization: NetLabs, Inc.
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 02:37:09 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.175420.19745@merlin.dev.cdx.mot.com> lezz@merlin.dev.cdx.mot.com (Lezz Giles) writes:
: 
: I'm getting a little bit scared about Perl V - I have lots of Perl IV code
: and I'm scared that it'll all have to be rewritten when I move to Perl V.
: So my question is very simple - what _isn't_ compatible?  What will need
: to be rewritten?

Here's my current list of incompatibilities:

    The second and third arguments of splice are now evaluated in scalar
    context (like the book says) rather than list context.  

    Saying shift @foo + 20 is now a semantic error.

    The elements of argument lists for formats are now evaluated in list
    context.
    
    You can't do a goto into a block that is optimized away.
    
    Some error messages will be different.

    s'$lhs'$rhs' now does no interpolation on either side.  It used to
    interplolate $lhs but not $rhs.

Not a real big list, as you can see.  I think that the list context for
format arguments is probably the likeliest one to bite you, and it's
real easy to work around.  Unless, of course, you're in the habit of
using "goto" to enter "while (0)" blocks...

I may well deprecate select(FILEHANDLE) in favor of some other mechanism,
but I won't break it (yet).

Larry
From: okamoto@hpcc01.corp.hp.com (Jeff Okamoto)
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 01:59:30 GMT
Subject: Problem with study and /o on 4.035 and 4.019
Organization: An-Pan Man Headquarters
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl

Here's a strange error that occurs in both 4.019 and 4.035, but works properly
on 4.010.

	$pat = "test";

	while ( <> ) { 
		study;
		if ( /$pat/o ) {
			print "Found pattern\n" ;
		} else {
			print "Didnt find\n";
		}
	}

If the input to this program is "test", "test" on two lines, 010 will
correctly report it was found twice, but 019 and 035 will say it wasn't
found on the second try.

Removing the call to study, or the /o trailer will solve the problem for
both 019 and 035.  Am I just doing something stupid?  Granted, the study
is pretty useless in this case, but I think the script should still work.
-- 
 \      oo	The New Number Who,
  \____|\mm	Jeff Okamoto
  //_//\ \_\	HP Corporate Computing & Services
 /K-9/  \/_/	okamoto@ranma.corp.hp.com
/___/_____\	
-----------	(415) 857-6236
From: eric@animus.Corp.Sun.COM (eric )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: In search of good idioms.
Date: 17 Dec 1992 23:53:45 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Distribution: world
Reply-To: eric@animus.Corp.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: animus.corp.sun.com

>claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird) writes:
>
>>I'm a newbie perl-plucker.  I'm working through some
>>exercises I've set myself, in an effort to develop
>>some taste in matters of perl style.  Current problem:
>>write a permute program.  Such a program would, for
>>example, when presented with input
>
>>	permute a1 zebra third
>
>>generate output something like
>
>>	a1 zebra third
>>	a1 third zebra
>>	zebra a1 third
>>	zebra third a1
>>	third a1 zebra
>>	third zebra a1
>

Here's one that uses lists and recursion:


@list = ( a, b, c  );
&permute( *list );
exit;

sub permute {
  local( *list, *print_list ) = @_;
  local( @short_list, $i );

  if ( $#list < 0 ){
    return 0; }
    
  for $i ( $[ .. $#list )
  {
    @short_list = @list;
    # remove current element from our local list, and pass the remainder down
    push( @print_list, splice( @short_list, $i, 1 ) );
    if ( ! &permute( *short_list, *print_list ) ) {
      print join(" ", @print_list ), "\n"; }
    pop( @print_list );
  }
  return 1;
}



BTW, why doesn't this work:

    push( @print_list, splice( @short_list = @list, $i, 1 ) );
    					   ^^^^^^^
or
    push( @print_list, splice( (@short_list = @list), $i, 1 ) );

-Eric

(+= all disclaimers)