in reply to Re^6: a *working* JSON module (Perl's Debugger), related issues
in thread Can someone please write a *working* JSON module

It is the defined-or-equals operator. It assigns the RHS to the LHS only if the LHS is undefined. It is listed in perlop along with all the other operators.

Thanks, I was reading it wrong. I wouldn't say the documentation is particularly thick about it:

$ perldoc perlop | grep '//=' .= %= ^= ^.= //= $

, but I see why bliako uses it, and think I'll borrow the scheme.

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Re^8: a *working* JSON module (Perl's Debugger), related issues
by bliako (Abbot) on Nov 01, 2021 at 07:17 UTC

    Just to expand on previous answer with some example. An operator of the form $LHS <OPERATOR>= $RHS (I think the general name is "shorthand"?) is the shorthand for $LHS = $LHS <OPERATOR> $RHS. (Edit: s/LHW/LHS/) E.g., the long way is: my $x = undef; my $x = $x // 12;. The shorthand is $x //= 12;. Many other operators follow this style, for example $x = 12; $x += 3; # $x is 15. But also $x = 0; $x ||= 1; Also, $x = 10; $x /= 2; # 5

    my $debug = 1; sub get_elevation_from_coordinates { my ($lat, $lon, $debug) = @_; $debug //= 0; ... }

    Now, in the context of the above quoted code which I think you refer to. There are 2 $debug there! One belongs to the outer scope of the sub. It will be valid inside the sub unless the sub declares (my $debug) its own private one. In this case it's an optional sub parameter who is set to zero if left undef (by the caller of the sub, e.g. in this case: get_elevation_from_coordinates(1,2)). That code would have been better like this:

    our $debug = 1; # OUR! sub get_elevation_from_coordinates { my ($lat, $lon, $debug) = @_; $debug //= $main::debug; # if none specified, use "global" (main's +) ... }

    In which case there's a global debug which is used to set its sub's debug value only if the caller did not specify one.

    This document is helpful to me: https://perl.plover.com/FAQs/Namespaces.html

    bw, bliako