According to perldoc -f delete, it returns the deleted value, not a Boolean. And,

$ perl -E 'my %foo = qw{ bar 42 }; say delete $foo{bar};'

in fact prints 42.

LanX isn't saying that delete ELEMENT returns a boolean; they're saying that since delete SLICE returns a list of what it would return for a single element (the deleted element), exists SLICE should also return a list of what it return for a single element (a boolean).

Delete returns the deleted value*s* (plural) of a slice and you didn't test a slice. ¹

Exists returns an (informal) Boolean (1 or dualvar ""/0) for a hash entry, and logically should also return a list of booleans in case of a slice.

Cheers Rolf


_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
see Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

Edit

¹) From the docs of delete I already linked to

my %hash = (foo => 11, bar => 22, baz => 33);
my $scalar = delete $hash{foo};         # $scalar is 11
$scalar = delete @hash{qw(foo bar)}; # $scalar is 22
my @array  = delete @hash{qw(foo baz)}; # @array  is (undef,33) <--- H
+ERE
[download]

And if given a key value slice, delete returns a list of key value pairs of what was deleted from the hash. Not clear what a corresponding exists feature would do.