in reply to Re: Why does this code think I'm trying to use symbolic references?
in thread Why does this code think I'm trying to use symbolic references?

print $n ... expects $n to contain a file handle.

But print $n + 4; doesn't; and that was my intent. And in (almost, if not) all other circumstances $n +4 and $n + 4 are equivalent, so It just didn't click even after I found that adding another space fixed the problem.

As I'm normally quite prodigious with my horizontal whitespace, it's just not something I've encountered before.

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Re^3: Why does this code think I'm trying to use symbolic references?
by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Jun 12, 2016 at 22:58 UTC
    ... I'm normally quite prodigious with my horizontal whitespace ...

    Either prodigality or parsimony seem to work; e.g.,  print $n+4; also avoids the problem. Apparently it's only  $n +4 that Perl looks at and says "Oh, of course: a unary plus!" (I haven't tested it, but I assume the same would happen | I've tested it, and the same thing happens with a pseudo-unary minus.)

    Update: Per perlop, unary + and - have higher precedence than the binary operators.

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