HI explain me about shift @_

[nechowdary]

hi all,
plz explain me , i am new to this..& perl.
plz tell me about the bellow syntax & in this shift @_
what rpresent and from where it will get his array values..
my $self = shift @_;
my $projdir = shift @_;
thanks&regards
chowdary.

[ALL]

the @_ is a special variable that is an array of all variables passed to the function/sub...

and shift simply shaves the first element off the array and returns it at the same time...

in other words if i had:

dosomething('foo', 'bar');
sub dosomething(){
#@_ = array('foo', 'bar')
my $firstarrayelement = shift @_;
#now $firstelement = 'foo'
#now @_ = array('bar')
my $secondarrayelement = shift @_;
#now $secondarrayelement = 'bar'
#now @_ = array(); <-- empty array
}

and of corse 'my' is just a way of declaring a variable