Is there a less clumsy alternative for copying up to “n” array elements?

Question

In a world of many @choices
With a $limit to what one can do,
Life proposes many @options
But at time

Answer 1

my @choices = @options[0..min($#options, $limit-1)];

Short, straightforward, clear.

Answer 2

my @choices = first_x_ele($limit, @options);

If you think something is unclear, use a sub! How you implement the sub isn't very important, but a short one would be:

sub first_x_ele { my $x = shift; splice(@_, 0, $x) }

Answer 3

I'd probably use splice:

my @choices = splice ( @options, 0, $limit ); 

Note that splice acts like shift/pop and modifies the source array - if that's undesirable, then copy it first.

Answer 4

@choices = @options; splice @choices, $limit;  # "splice() offset past end" before v5.16

It can also be done in a single statement!

@choices = splice @{[@options]}, 0, $limit;

And also

splice @{$choices_ref=[@options]}, $limit;  # Warns "splice() offset past end" before v5.16
splice $choices_ref=[@options], $limit;     # Ditto. Requires Perl v5.14. "Experimental"

Answer 5

Of the options you provided I actually like #1 and #4 and have definitely written statements like those before. If those options really bothered me, I might write it this way:

use strict;
use warnings;

use List::Util qw(min);
use Data::Dumper;

my @options = ('a'..'c');
my $limit   = 5;

my @choices = @options[0..min($limit-1, $#options)];
print Dumper \@choices;
# $VAR1 = [
#      'a',
#      'b',
#      'c'
#    ];    

$limit = 2;
@choices = @options[0..min($limit-1, $#options)];
print Dumper \@choices;
# $VAR1 = [
#       'a',
#       'b'
#   ];

but this is largely opinion based and I am sure other people would do it differently.