Best way to iterate through a Perl array

If you only care about the elements of @Array, use:

for my $el (@Array) {
# ...
}

or

If the indices matter, use:

for my $i (0 .. $#Array) {
    # ...
}

Or, as of Perl 5.12.1, you can use:

while (my ($i, $el) = each @Array) {
    # ...
}

If you need both the element and its index in the body of the loop using each, you'll be giving up compatibility with pre-5.12.1 Perl versions.

Some other pattern than these might be appropriate under certain circumstances.

IMO, implementation #1 is typical and being short and idiomatic for Perl trumps the others for that alone. A benchmark of the three choices might offer you insight into speed, at least.

The best way to decide questions like this is to benchmark them:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Benchmark qw(:all);

our @input_array = (0..1000);

my $a = sub {
    my @array = @{[ @input_array ]};
    my $index = 0;
    foreach my $element (@array) {
       die unless $index == $element;
       $index++;
    }
};

my $b = sub {
    my @array = @{[ @input_array ]};
    my $index = 0;
    while (defined(my $element = shift @array)) {
       die unless $index == $element;
       $index++;
    }
};

my $c = sub {
    my @array = @{[ @input_array ]};
    my $index = 0;
    while (scalar(@array) !=0) {
       my $element = shift(@array);
       die unless $index == $element;
       $index++;
    }
};

my $d = sub {
    my @array = @{[ @input_array ]};
    foreach my $index (0.. $#array) {
       my $element = $array[$index];
       die unless $index == $element;
    }
};

my $e = sub {
    my @array = @{[ @input_array ]};
    for (my $index = 0; $index <= $#array; $index++) {
       my $element = $array[$index];
       die unless $index == $element;
    }
};

my $f = sub {
    my @array = @{[ @input_array ]};
    while (my ($index, $element) = each @array) {
       die unless $index == $element;
    }
};

my $count;
timethese($count, {
   '1' => $a,
   '2' => $b,
   '3' => $c,
   '4' => $d,
   '5' => $e,
   '6' => $f,
});

And running this on Perl 5, version 24, subversion 1 (v5.24.1) built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi

I get:

Benchmark: running 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 for at least 3 CPU seconds...
         1:  3 wallclock secs ( 3.16 usr +  0.00 sys =  3.16 CPU) @ 12560.13/s (n=39690)
         2:  3 wallclock secs ( 3.18 usr +  0.00 sys =  3.18 CPU) @ 7828.30/s (n=24894)
         3:  3 wallclock secs ( 3.23 usr +  0.00 sys =  3.23 CPU) @ 6763.47/s (n=21846)
         4:  4 wallclock secs ( 3.15 usr +  0.00 sys =  3.15 CPU) @ 9596.83/s (n=30230)
         5:  4 wallclock secs ( 3.20 usr +  0.00 sys =  3.20 CPU) @ 6826.88/s (n=21846)
         6:  3 wallclock secs ( 3.12 usr +  0.00 sys =  3.12 CPU) @ 5653.53/s (n=17639)

So the 'foreach (@Array)' is about twice as fast as the others. All the others are very similar.

ikegami also points out that there are quite a few differences in these implementations other than speed.

In a single line to print the element or array.

print $_ for (@array);

Note: remember that $_ is internally referring to the element of @array in the loop. Any changes made in $_ will reflect in @array

For example,

my @array = qw( 1 2 3 );
for (@array) {
        $_ = $_ *2 ;
}
print "@array";

Output: 2 4 6

1 is substantially different from 2 and 3, since it leaves the array in tact, whereas the other two leave it empty.

I'd say #3 is pretty wacky and probably less efficient, so forget that.

Which leaves you with #1 and #2, and they do not do the same thing, so one cannot be "better" than the other. If the array is large and you don't need to keep it, generally scope will deal with it (but see NOTE), so generally, #1 is still the clearest and simplest method. Shifting each element off will not speed anything up. Even if there is a need to free the array from the reference, I'd just go:

undef @Array;

when done.

• NOTE: The subroutine containing the scope of the array actually keeps the array and re-uses the space next time. Generally, that should be fine (see comments).