What is ranges and flip-flop operator in Perl?

In Perl, ranges are used to create lists of values within a given range. They are particularly useful for generating sequences of numbers or characters. The flip-flop operator, on the other hand, is a special operator that allows you to select ranges of input based on the state of the sequence it processes.

Ranges in Perl

Ranges can be defined using two dots (..) for inclusive ranges and three dots (...) for exclusive ranges. Here’s a simple example:

# Including the last value @numbers = (1..5); # (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) # Excluding the last value @numbers_exclusive = (1...5); # (1, 2, 3, 4)

Flip-Flop Operator

The flip-flop operator works in a way that it alternates between two states. It reads input in a list context and returns true when the specified beginning and end conditions are met.

# Example of flip-flop operator while (<>) { if (/start/) { $flop = 1; # Start the sequence } print if $flop; # Print lines while in the sequence if (/end/) { $flop = 0; # End the sequence } }

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