Practical UNIX

Variable Manipulation

Variable manipulation is grouped into a couple different groups. First there are the increment and decrement symbols (++ and --), the dot (.), substitution, and then split and join. Finally, there is the chomp command. These topics will be discussed in this order.

++, --

These two symbols increment and decrement the value of a variable by one. The following example shows incrementing the variable $penny by one and then decrementing it by one:

$penny++;
$penny--;

You will find this much quicker and easier than the following:

$penny += 1;
or
$penny = $penny -1;

The dot (.) is used to concatenate strings. Given the following two strings:

$string1 = "University of Kentucky Wildcats"; $string2 = "are the best basketball players ...