Perl | Getting the Number of Elements of an Array

An array in Perl is a variable used to store an ordered list of scalar values. An array variable is preceded by an "at" (@) sign. The size of an array can be determined using the scalar context on the array which returns the number of elements in the array Example 1: Perl

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Initializing the array
@a = (1, 2, 3);

# Assigning the array to a scalar
# variable which stores size of
# the array
$s = @a;

# Printing the size
print "Size of the Array is $s";

Above code returns the physical size of the array, not the number of valid elements. In order to obtain the maximum index of an array, '$#' is used as shown in the example below: Example 2: Perl

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Initializing the array
@a = (1, 2, 3);

# Store the value at any index
# Let's take index 15 here,
$a[15] = 20;

# Printing the Array
print "Array is @a";

# Getting the maximum index 
# of the array
$i = $#a;

# Printing the Max. Index
print "\nMaximum index is $i";

Here is how the above code works:- Step1: Initializing an array with some values Step2: Assigning a value at any random index leaving the other indices blank Step3: Printing the array to show the blank spaces left in the array Step4: To get the maximum index '$#' is used Step5: Further, print the maximum index