last

last

last LABEL

last EXPR

last

The last command is like the break statement in C (as used in loops); it immediately exits the loop in question. If the LABEL is omitted, the command refers to the innermost enclosing loop. The last EXPR form, available starting in Perl 5.18.0, allows a label name to be computed at run time, and is otherwise identical to last LABEL . The continue block, if any, is not executed:

LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
    last LINE if /^$/;  # exit when done with header
    #...
}

last cannot be used to exit a block that returns a value such as eval {} , sub {} , or do {} , and should not be used to exit a grep() or map() operation.

Note that a block by itself is semantically identical to a loop that executes once. Thus last can be used to effect an early exit out of such a block.

See also continue for an illustration of how last, next, and redo work-

Unlike most named operators, this has the same precedence as assignment- It is also exempt from the looks-like-a-function rule, so last ("foo")."bar" will cause "bar" to be part of the argument to last.