Perl last Statement

The last statement in Perl is like break statement in C. It is used inside a loop to exit the loop immediately. In other words, last condition iterates the loop.

The Perl syntax for last statement is given below:

last;

Following is a simple example showing Perl last statement.

use warnings;
use strict;
my ($key, $value);
my %rate = ("shoes" => 550,
 "boots" => 1200,
 "jaggi" => 800,
 "jacket" => 1500);
print("Please enter an item to know the price:\n");
$key = <STDIN>;
chomp($key);
$value = 0;
# searching
foreach(keys %rate){
    if($_ eq $key){
       $value = $rate{$_};
       last;    }
}
# result
if($value > 0){
   print("$key costs is Rs. $value \n");
}else{
   print("$key is not in our list. We apologise!!\n");
}

In the above program

• When user provides a key, hash elements runs via loop and each hash key is compared with the key provided by the user.
• If match is found, we exit the loop using last statement otherwise search continues.
• On finding a match result is displayed.

Perl last Statement with LABEL

Using the Perl last statement alone, you can exits only innermost loop. If you want to exit a nested loop, put a label in the outer loop and pass label to the last statement.

If LABEL is specified with last statement, execution drops out of the loop encountering LABEL instead of currently enclosing loop.

The Perl syntax for last statement with LABEL is given below:

last LABEL;

use warnings;
use strict;
my ($key, $value);
my %rate = ("shoes" => 550,
 "boots" => 1200,
 "jaggi" => 800,
 "jacket" => 1500);
 $value = 0;
print("Please enter an item to know the price:\n");
OUTER: while(<STDIN>){
$key = $_;
 chomp($key);
# searching
INNER: foreach(keys %rate){
    if($_ eq $key){
       $value = $rate{$_};
       last outer;
    }
}
 print("$key is not in our list. We apologise!!\n") if($value ==0);
# result
}
   print("$key costs is Rs. $value \n");

The above program works in the same way except that it asks the user to enter a search key again if it couldn't find a match.

Two labels OUTER and INNER are used.

Inside foreach loop, if match is found, we'll exit both the loops because OUTER label is passed to the last statement.