On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 at 07:24:39PM -0500, David L. Nicol wrote:
> > The only decision, then, is to decide which context to use; if it
> > deparses to concatenation then it seems logical to use scalar context.
> > This also makes sense in that you can force list context with @{[
> > $weather->temp ]} if you really wanted it.
>
> $ perl -le 'sub w{wantarray?"WA":"WS"};print " attempt: ${\scalar(w)}"'
> attempt: WS
>
> Maybe we just need a shorter synonym for C<scalar>?
Or DWIM "${\foo()}" to force scalar context. Everytime I come across that
construct I have to wonder why it's not called in scalar context. The '$'
would seem to imply it should.
Or cause the foo() method in "foo $foo->bar bar" to be called in scalar
context by default, obviating the need for a specific scalar call.
I'd actually like both solutions to be implemented.
What's even more confusing:
sub foo { wantarray ? "list" : "scalar" }
print scalar("${\foo()}") --> "list"
print scalar(${\foo()}) --> "list"
$foo = ${\foo()}; print $foo --> "list"
And yet:
sub foo { wantarray ? \"list" : \"scalar" }
print ${foo()} --> "scalar"
print ${ ("bar", foo()) } --> "scalar"
(These were all tested using 5.6.0.)
I have to assume \foo() is actually \(foo()) or some such. IMHO, this is
entirely non-intuitive. Can anyone enlighten me as to why this is as it is?
I believe there was a p5p discussion about this, but I dread delving into
the archives again..
Michael
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