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.