Removing entry from @rray

Hello,

For some time I have been using two different method for removing an entry
from an @rray. It is my beleif that these methods may be outdated or
erroneous and I wanted to get some opinions. My program reads the contents
of a text file, and places each line into the array. Here are my two
methods:

Using Splicing
=========================

open (ADDRESSES, "<addressbook.txt") or die "Can't open file: $!";
@entries=<ADDRESSES>;
close(ADDRESSES);

$variable = "Smith";

foreach $entry(@entries) {
$location++;
if ($entry eq $variable) {
$location--;
$line = $location;
}
}

splice(@entries, $line, 1);

First of all I understand that many of you will first comment on the means
by which I read the text file and place its content into the array or that
strict isnt used above, and I will be fixing that soon using SLURP and
calling the "use strict" header.

So this method uses the old splice routine. I find this method to be
confusing and im not quite a fan of it. On to the next:

Redefining the @array element inside to loop
=========================

open (ADDRESSES, "<addressbook.txt") or die "Can't open file: $!";
@entries=<ADDRESSES>;
close(ADDRESSES);

$variable = "Smith";

foreach $entry(@entries) {
if ($entry eq $variable) {
$entry = "";
}
}

This method simply remodifies the $entry with a null value killing its data
and the following \n inside the loop (at least I think it does).

Both of these methods do the trick but I have a feeling that neither may be
the most efficient way or worse these methods may have side effects that I
am unaware of. Alot has changed in the world of Perl since I started using
these methods and I wanted to know if there is a better/safer/more efficient
way to do this.

I would also like to ask about terminating a loop ... obviously after a
match is found I would want to terminate the loop so that it doesn't waste
time checking all the other array elements for a match. Suprisingly I was
not able to source this answer. I once read somewhere that a command called
"return" or something is used, thoughts?

I appriciate you time on this, Thanks much,

Robert


.

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