Programming Perl, 4th Edition

splice

splice ARRAY, OFFSET, LENGTH, LIST
splice ARRAY, OFFSET, LENGTH
splice ARRAY, OFFSET
splice ARRAY

This function removes the elements designated by OFFSET and LENGTH from an ARRAY, and replaces them with the elements of LIST, if any. If OFFSET is negative, the function counts backward from the end of the array, but if that would land before the beginning of the array, an exception is raised. If LENGTH is negative, it removes the elements from OFFSET onward except for –LENGTH elements at the end of the array. If both OFFSET and LENGTH are in list context, splice returns the elements removed from the array. In scalar context, it returns the last element removed, or undef if there was none. If the number of new elements doesn’t equal the number of old elements, the array grows or shrinks as necessary, and elements after the splice change their position correspondingly. If LENGTH is omitted, the function removes everything from OFFSET onward. If OFFSET is omitted, the array is cleared as it is read. If both OFFSET and LENGTH are omitted, removes everything. If OFFSET is past the end of the ARRAY, Perl issues a warning, and splices at the end of the ARRAY.

The equivalents listed in Table 27-5 hold.

Table 27-5. Splice equivalents for array operations

Direct Method	Splice Equivalent
push(@a, ...