ACCESSING ARRAY ELEMENTS

Accessing Array Elements

When accessing individual elements from an array, you must prefix the variable with a dollar sign ($) and then append the element index within square brackets after the name of the variable. For example:

#! /usr/bin/perl

@days = qw/Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun/;

print "$days[0]\t";

print "$days[1]\t";

print "$days[2]\t";

print "$days[6]\t";

print "$days[-1]\t";

print "$days[-7]\t";

This will produce following result:

Mon        Tue         Wed        Sun         Sun         Mon

Array indices start from zero, so to access first element you need to give 0 as indices. You can also give a negative index, in which case you select the element from the end, rather than the beginning, of the array. This means that

print $days[-1]; # output Sun

print $days[-7]; # output Mon