time for another doubt!

i was going thru someones perl code and needed to know what the following statements could be doing. thnx to anyone who could help..


You should grab a good book about Perl (Leraning Perl or Programming Perl) spend the weekend reading it and the following questions would have been answered.


1. my $variable=shift; # why assign "shift" to a variable?


shift without a parameter removes and returns the first element of the default array (@_) which contains parameters given to subroutines.
see: perldoc -f shift


2. $array[@array]=somevalue #what does this do and hos does this work?


@array in scalar context gives the number of elements in the array, which is also the next free index.
This just appends a value to the array.
see: perldoc perldata


3. $/="\f"; # this is some sort of "formfeed" matching- what is formfeed and whats cud be the purpose of doing ths?


$/ is the input record separator, assinging \f to it will split the next file on \f when reading it with <>.
see: perldoc perlvar


4. can we use a variable without declaring it in perl if we dont use strict or warnings?


Yes.


5. my $portfolio=$1 # is the variable = 1 or "$1"


$1 contains the value of the first parenthesized match in a regular expression.
see: perldoc perlre



Again: Get a good book and read it. You will solve your problems faster and easier.

Regards

Bernd