Question

How do I initialize an array to 0?

I have tried this.

my @arr = ();

But it always throws me a warning, “Use of uninitialized value”. I do not know the size of the array beforehand. I fill it dynamically. I thought the above piece of code was supposed to initialize it to 0.

How do I do this?

Answer 1

If I understand you, perhaps you don’t need an array of zeroes; rather, you need a hash. The hash keys will be the values in the other array and the hash values will be the number of times the value exists in the other array:

use strict;
use warnings;

my @other_array = (0,0,0,1,2,2,3,3,3,4);
my %tallies;
$tallies{$_} ++ for @other_array;

print "$_ => $tallies{$_}\n" for sort {$a <=> $b} keys %tallies;    

Output:

0 => 3
1 => 1
2 => 2
3 => 3
4 => 1

To answer your specific question more directly, to create an array populated with a bunch of zeroes, you can use the technique in these two examples:

my @zeroes = (0) x 5;            # (0,0,0,0,0)

my @zeroes = (0) x @other_array; # A zero for each item in @other_array.
                                 # This works because in scalar context
                                 # an array evaluates to its size.