Perl pop Function



Description

This function returns the last element of ARRAY, removing the value from the array. Note that ARRAY must explicitly be an array, not a list.

If ARRAY is omitted, it pops the last value from @ARGV in the main program or when called within eval STRING, or the BEGIN, CHECK, INIT, or END blocks. Otherwise, it attempts to pop information from the @_ array within a subroutine. It is the opposite of push, which when used in combination, allows you to implement "stacks".

Note that after applying pop the array will be shortened by one element.

Syntax

Following is the simple syntax for this function −

pop ARRAY

pop

Return Value

This function returns undef if list is empty else last element from the array.

Example

Following is the example code showing its basic usage −

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

@a = (1, 2, 3, 4);
print("pop() ", pop(@a), "   leaves  ",@a, "\n");

When above code is executed, it produces the following result −

pop() 4  leaves 123
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