why is *& weird?

I guess that the point of the patch of japhy described Why Is $& Bad? is more efficient obfuscation :)

But I was surprised by what I got when I executed the following code (using perl 5.006001). I have not gone thru the Perl sources to explain the behavior. Or I am missing something obvious?

So I ask you to answer without executing it: 1/ Does it compile 2/ If so, what does it do?

open *&, "/etc/printcap";
print "opened\n" unless  eof( *&);
print <&>;
[download]

-- stefp

Comment on why is *& weird? Download Code

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Re: why is *& weird? by japhy (Canon) on Sep 04, 2001 at 01:07 UTC
I think `<&>` is globbing instead of reading from a filehandle. _____________________________________________________ Jeff`[japhy]`Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker. `s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;`	[reply]
Re: why is *& weird? by stefp (Vicar) on Sep 04, 2001 at 01:17 UTC
That is indeed the right conclusion: `perl -MO=Concise,-exec -e 'print <&>' 1ib <0> enter 1ic <;> nextstate(main 167 -e:1) v 1id <0> pushmark s 1ie <0> pushmark[t3] s 1if <$> const(PV "&") sM 1ig <$> const(IV 0) sM 1ih <$> gv(*CORE::GLOBAL::glob) s 1ii <1> entersub[t1] lKS/TARG,1 1ij <@> print vK 1ik <@> leave[t1] vKP/REFC` [download] -- stefp	[reply] [d/l]