Hi,
Why does 'looks_like_number()' report that an SvRV looks like a number ?
Are there occasions where programmers want to be able to perform arithmetic operations on the address value of a perl reference ?
It seems odd to me that the following utters no warning, silently multiplying the address value by 2.
use warnings; $x = 'hello world'; $y = \$x; print $y, "\n"; $y *= 2; print $y, "\n"; __END__
I mean: multiplying $y by 2 makes as much sense as multiplying $x by 2 ... yet only the latter produces a warning.
If I wanted to know if a variable is a valid number, I would like references to be rejected - hence I would have to be coding:
if(looks_like_number(y) && !SvROK(y)) /* it's valid */
No big deal .... I'm just wondering if there are good reasons for having 'looks_like_number()' work that way ..... and (assuming there are good reasons) wondering what they are.
Cheers, Rob
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