Re^3: Generate the perl sequence 1, 11, 111, ....

The odd-looking syntax

mysubroutine {block} @list;
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is mentioned in perlsub. Look in the section on prototypes where it describes the "&" prototype character, particularly the sentence "An & requires an anonymous subroutine, which, if passed as the first argument, does not require the sub keyword or a subsequent comma" and also the examples "try", "catch", and "mygrep".

On the other hand, it looks to me that map is somewhat more magical than the examples in perlsub; if you call

map (sub { "1" x $_ }, (1..10));
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it returns an array of coderefs (references to subroutines) which is not at all what is needed here.

Also, not all builtin functions have regular enough syntax to be expressed with a prototype at all. map is one of them:

perl -wle 'print prototype("CORE::map")'
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prints

Use of uninitialized value in print at -e line 1.
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Re^4: Generate the perl sequence 1, 11, 111, ....
by blazar (Canon) on Oct 11, 2008 at 10:10 UTC

On the other hand, it looks to me that map is somewhat more magical than the examples in perlsub; if you call
map (sub { "1" x $_ }, (1..10));
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it returns an array of coderefs (references to subroutines) which is not at all what is needed here.

I personally believe that indeed map and its sibling grep are more magical: precisely because as I wrote in my reply to the OP they accept an expression to be evaluated for each of the other parameters. But I don't understand what you mean with "which is not at all what is needed here" because your example does exaclty what I mean: I do expect it to return a list (not an array!) of coderefs. Only, it probably does not do what you expect in that those coderefs are... all the same coderef:

C:\temp>perl -E "say for map sub {1 x $_} => 1..3"
CODE(0x182a944)
CODE(0x182a944)
CODE(0x182a944)
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This is because $_ is a package variable and those anonymous subs are not closures: when you will use one of them, its $_ will be that in scope at the moment, not the one passed to map() when it was created. To obtain that you have to close over a lexical:

C:\temp>perl -E "say for map { my $x=$_; sub {1 x $x} } 1..3"
CODE(0x23aa7c)
CODE(0x182aef4)
CODE(0x182ad74)
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Alternatively, and this is the interesting point to be noted here, Perl 5.10 and highter support lexical $_:

C:\temp>perl -E "my $_; say for map sub {1 x $_} => 1..3"
CODE(0x23a97c)
CODE(0x182a9bc)
CODE(0x183bbbc)
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