Net::FTP & if statement behavior

alienhuman has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks,

I'm using Net::FTP to great effect, however I've recently found some very strange behavior when I put a ftp method call into an if statement.

To wit:

The following method returns the value "1" when it is successful, as described in the perldoc, and evidenced in this snippet from the debugger...

DB<2> print $ftp->cwd( $whole );
Net::FTP=GLOB(0x47dbf4)>>> CWD /web
Net::FTP=GLOB(0x47dbf4)<<< 250 CWD command successful.
1
[download]

However, the same method call inside an if statement doesn't evaluate TRUE... which is not at all what I expected...

DB<3> print if( $ftp->cwd( $whole ) );
Net::FTP=GLOB(0x47dbf4)>>> CWD /web
Net::FTP=GLOB(0x47dbf4)<<< 250 CWD command successful.

  DB<4>
[download]

Why doesn't this if( $ftp->cwd( ... ) ); evaluate to true, if the value returned by $ftp->cwd is 1?

Thanks,

Chris

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Re: Net::FTP & if statement behavior by projekt21 (Friar) on Jan 02, 2002 at 22:53 UTC
Hi, what I can see is: `print 1; # prints "1" print if 1; # prints nothing` [download] try something like: `print 1 if ( $ftp->cwd( $whole ) );` [download] Does this help you? alex pleiner <alex@zeitform.de> zeitform Internet Dienste	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re(2): Net::FTP & if statement behavior by dmmiller2k (Chaplain) on Jan 02, 2002 at 23:00 UTC
Nice catch, projekt21. On first scan of the code, I missed the `if` (or at least the behavioral significance of it). Conceivably, alienhuman may have made the same mistake. dmm You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day ... Or, you can teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Net::FTP & if statement behavior by alienhuman (Pilgrim) on Jan 02, 2002 at 22:56 UTC
Ugh. What a rookie mistake. Thx.	[reply]
Re: Net::FTP & if statement behavior by derby (Abbot) on Jan 02, 2002 at 23:03 UTC
Chris, but it is evaluating as "true." There are no "real" boolean ~~operators~~ types in perl. Somewhere in the docs (try perldoc perlsyn) it states that a statement is "false" if it evaluates to the null string (""), 0, "0" (string of just ascii 060), or undef. Everything else is true. Now there are some extra things when dealing with "0" but basically with Net::FTP, you could do something like this: ~~`if( $ftp->cwd( $whole ) ) { print "Ftp command suceeded\n"; } else { print "Ftp command failed\n"; }`~~ ~~[download]~~ Update Ug. I need to more clearly read the questions. -derby	[reply] [d/l]