Hi all,
I'm new to Perl and can't figure this one out. I downloaded what I believe to be the current stable version of ActivePerl for Windows (version 5.8.x, I think; how do I find out what version I have? The download file is called ActivePerl-5.8.8.820-MSWin32-x86-274739.zip) I also downloaded OpenPerlIDE, since I wanted a Windows IDE- I have no particular reason for choosing this one except that it is free, and because it was apparently written in Delphi, which I am familiar with). After some experimentation and consulting of manual pages, and posting a question to this form, I've gotten some simple things to work. Every attempt I've made to use a for loop has produced wierd results, such as the peice of code following. When I rewrite the code using a while loop, everything looks okay. Have i stumbled onto a bug in ActivePerl or in the OpenPerlIDE, or am I making some newbie mistake??

[code]
# testforloop.pl
for ($i=1,$i<=10,$i++) {
print ('loop number: ',$i,"\n");
}

[result output]
loop number: 2
loop number: 2
loop number: 2

# strange, wouldn't you say?
# or try this one

# examine representation of numerical values
for ($i=1,$i<=10,$i++) {
$result1=sprintf("%d","$i");
$result2=sprintf("%e","$i");
$result3=sprintf("%f","$1");
print ($result1," ",$result2," ",$result3,"\n");
}
print ("\n");
# strange results!
# now try a while loop- this seems to work
$i=1;
while ($i<=10) {
$result1=sprintf("%d","$i");
$result2=sprintf("%e","$i");
$result3=sprintf("%f","$1");
print ("$i: ",$result1," ",$result2," ",$result3,"\n");
$i++;
}

[result output]
2 2.000000e+000 0.000000
2 2.000000e+000 0.000000
2 2.000000e+000 0.000000

1: 1 1.000000e+000 0.000000
2: 2 2.000000e+000 0.000000
3: 3 3.000000e+000 0.000000
4: 4 4.000000e+000 0.000000
5: 5 5.000000e+000 0.000000
6: 6 6.000000e+000 0.000000
7: 7 7.000000e+000 0.000000
8: 8 8.000000e+000 0.000000
9: 9 9.000000e+000 0.000000
10: 10 1.000000e+001 0.000000

[\code]

Thanks for the help.

Perl syntax uses the semi-colon as a terminator:

should be

Thanks. Figures it would be something dumb like that. I'm a novice at Perl after all. It strikes me odd that the compiler didn't object to my use of the commas. Anyone have some insight into why that is so?

Because it is valid syntax:

for ($i=1,$i<=10,$i++) {
print ('loop number: ',$i,"\n");
}

outputs:

loop number: 2
loop number: 2
loop number: 2

akin to:

for ($i,$i,$i) {
print ('loop number: ',++$i,"\n");
}

of course the output is different but it shows that the syntax is valid. You can use an easier construct though:

for $i (1..10) {
print "$i\n";
}