Perl ABC

1. Perl
›
2. Operators
›
3. here

String list operator - qw()

String list operator is a operator to create list of strings easily. You can create a list of strings without writing single quotes and commas.

qw(string1 string2 string3)

The following is an example of the string list operator. The return value is assigned to array.

my @strings = qw(cat dog mouse);

This is the same as the following list of strings.

my @strings = ('cat', 'dog', 'mouse');

You can also use characters other than "(" and ")" to create a list of strings.

qw(cat dog mouse)
qw/cat dog mouse/
qw{cat dog mouse}
qw#cat dog mouse#
qw[cat dog mouse]
qw!cat dog mouse!

Example program

This is an example program that uses the string list operator.

use strict;
use warnings;

# String list operator
my @strings = qw(cat dog mouse); # Same meaning as ('cat', 'dog', 'mouse')
print "1: String list\n";
print join(',', @strings) . "\n";

Reference: join function

Output:

1: String list
cat,dog,mouse