Perl shift operator simple question

Question

What\'s the purpose of the following two lines of perl??

my $host = shift || \'localhost\';
my $port = shift || 200;

That should return loc

Answer 1

If you use shift, always put the array on it. I've seen experience Perl programmers forget that outside a subroutine, shift works on @ARGV. The more things a programmer has to remember at the same time, the more likely he is to make an error.