Actually, the third argument doesn't indicate whether
the statement is in void context, but rather whether the
statement is an assignment varient. Here's the relevant
section from perldoc overload:
Calling Conventions for Binary Operations
The functions specified in the use overload ... directive
are called with three (in one particular case with four, see
the section on Last Resort) arguments. If the corresponding
operation is binary, then the first two arguments are the
two arguments of the operation. However, due to general
object calling conventions, the first argument should always
be an object in the package, so in the situation of 7+$a,
the order of the arguments is interchanged. It probably
does not matter when implementing the addition method, but
whether the arguments are reversed is vital to the
subtraction method. The method can query this information
by examining the third argument, which can take three
different values:
| FALSE |
the order of arguments is as in the current
operation. |
| TRUE |
the arguments are reversed. |
| undef |
the current operation is an assignment variant (as in
$a+=7), but the usual function is called instead. This
additional information can be used to generate some
optimizations. Compare the section on Calling Conventions
for Mutators. |
The point is so that you can distinguish between
print($obj += 6);
and
print($obj + 6);
They should both print the same thing, but in the first case $obj should be increased by 6 and in the second case it shouldn't.
--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>
"The first rule of Perl club is you don't talk about
Perl club."
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