How do I take a reference to an array slice in Perl?
arrays, perl, reference, slice
Solution
Data::Alias seems to be able to do what you want:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict; use warnings;
use Data::Alias;
my @x = 1 .. 10;
print "@x\n";
my $y = alias [ @x[2 ..7] ];
@$y[0, -1] = qw/ < > /;
print "@x\n";
Output:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 2 < 4 5 6 7 > 9 10
Problem
How would you take a reference to an array slice such that when you modify elements of the slice reference, the original array is modified? The following code works due to `@_` aliasing magic, but seems like a bit of a hack to me: ``` my @a = 1 .. 10; my $b = sub{\@_}->(@a[2..7]); @$b[0, -1] = qw/ < > /; print "@a\n"; # 1 2 < 4 5 6 7 > 9 10 ``` Anyone have a better / faster way? Edit: the code example above is simply to illustrate the relationship required between @a and $b, it in no way reflects the way this functionality will be used in production code.