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Can someone please explain what is happening with the declaration of the array @diff?

I do not know why the declaration below works. I haven't ever seen it written like this in any of the books.

It looks like he is initialising a hash with keys from list2 and values as an empty array, but he is not using a hash. I have run the code below and it works, so he hasn't made a typo. I also don't understand how he is able to dereference an array in the print line below.

@diff{ @list2 }= ();;

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@list1 = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
@list2 = (2, 3, 4);;
@diff{ @list2 }= ();;

print grep !exists($diff{$_}), @list1;;
1 5

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Original source here: http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=919422

I would ask on the original thread, but the author made this comment in 2011.

Can anyone provide an explanation with a reference to the rule that allows this?

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ozo

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Grant Rogers

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Thanks for the quick response, I think I was correct with my original assumption than, he is populating a hash with keys from @list2 and assigning the values to empty for each key.

The hash slice explains the syntax, thank you :).

I also noticed the superfluous semi colons, I guess he was typing out the code quickly, but useful for other people to know who read this.

ozo

> populating a hash with keys from @list2 and assigning the values to empty for each key.
correct