4.1. "+=" and friends

Perl provides a shortcut for writing "$myvar = $myvar + $value", or "$myvar = $myvar / $value" and similar operations. Here's an example:

$x = 1;
$y = 0;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";
$x *= 2; $y += 1;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";
$x *= 2; $y += 1;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";
$x *= 2; $y += 1;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";
$x *= 2; $y += 1;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";
$x *= 2; $y += 1;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";

Since the operations $x += 1 and $x -= 1 are so commonly used, they were also assigned a separate operator. One can use $x++ and $x-- to perform them. For example, the above program could have been written as:

$x = 1;
$y = 0;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";
$x *= 2; $y++;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";
$x *= 2; $y++;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";
$x *= 2; $y++;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";
$x *= 2; $y++;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";
$x *= 2; $y++;
print "2^", $y, "=", $x, "\n";