Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2001 00:18:46 GMT
From: ChaoticSun <chaoticsun@rejector.com>
Subject: Newbie Questions
Message-Id: <0ni5ptsr06rrehr3b2juha9ko27poar9jb@4ax.com>

I am just beginning to learn Perl and picked up the 3rd edition of the
Llama book ("Learning Perl") by Schwartz and Phoenix.  So far I have
run into two problems.  I would appreciate any advice regarding the
two applications printed below:

#!perl
use strict

my @names = qw(fred betty barney dino wilma pebbles bamm-bamm);
my $result = &which_element_is ("dino", @names);
print $result;

sub which_element_is {
	my($what, @list) = @_;
	print "In subroutine.\n";
	foreach (0..$#list) {
		print "Currently looking at $list[$_] which is $_.\n";
		if ($what eq $list[$_]) {
			return $_;
		}
	}
	-1;
}

AND

#!perl
use strict

sub total {
	my $sum;
	foreach (@_) {
		$sum += $_;
	}
	$sum;
}

my @fred = qw (1 3 5 7 9);
my $fred_total = &total(@fred);
print "The total of \@fred is $fred_total.\n";
print "Enter some numbers on separate lines:\n";
my $user_total = &total(<STDIN>);
print "The total of those numbers is $user_total.\n";


Both programs work as expected if I comment out the "use strict" line.
When it is left in, the first program never executes the foreach block
and the second program gives me the following error message:
syntax error at ex4-1.pl line 4, near "use strict

sub total "
Execution of ex4-1.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

What am I doing wrong?!!!!!!