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in reply to Re^3: What is true and false in Perl?
in thread What is true and false in Perl?

what are you trying to say?

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Re^5: What is true and false in Perl?
by jdporter (Paladin) on Oct 18, 2012 at 15:25 UTC

    The same thing tobyink and tye said, though more obtusely and snarkily.

    Here's another example:

    tie my $var, 'Some::BlackBox::Module'; $var = "45"; if ( $var ) { print "var is true\n" } # doesn't print! WTF?

    The mere fact that an expression evaluates to a true value in scalar context doesn't mean it is true.

    tie and overload are among the user-accessible features which can muddy the true/false waters.

    An example like this should make the principle more obvious:

    my $obj = ObjectWithLotsOfOpaqueStructure::AndLotsOfHiddenState->new( -use_overloading => 1, ); if ( $obj ) { print "obj is 'true'.\n"; # What does this even mean? # Maybe obj is an iterator with another available item? }