for loop in perl

Question

my @array=(1..10);
for my $i (@array){$i++;}
print \"array is now:@array\";

this is changing the values of the array. Why?

Answer 1

This is documented behaviour. See perldoc perlsyn:

The foreach loop iterates over a normal list value and sets the variable VAR to be each element of the list in turn.

If any element of LIST is an lvalue, you can modify it by modifying VAR inside the loop. Conversely, if any element of LIST is NOT an lvalue, any attempt to modify that element will fail. In other words, the foreach loop index variable is an implicit alias for each item in the list that you're looping over.