Programming Perl, 4th Edition

last

last LABEL
last

The last operator immediately exits the loop in question, just like the break statement in C or Java (as used in loops). If LABEL is omitted, the operator refers to the innermost enclosing loop. The continue block, if any, is not executed.

LINE: while (<MAILMSG>) {
    last LINE if /^$/; # exit when done with header
    # rest of loop here
}

last cannot be used to exit a block that returns a value, such as eval {}, sub {}, or do {}, and it should not be used to exit a grep or map operation. With warnings enabled, Perl warns if you last out of a loop that’s not in your current lexical scope, such as a loop in a calling subroutine.

A block by itself is semantically identical to a loop that executes once. Thus, last can be used to effect an early exit out of such a block. See also Chapter 4 for illustrations of how last, next, redo, and continue work.