Cheap obfu: or is it?

Okay, I based this off an obfu I saw somewhere... I tried looking for it but couldn't :(

Anyway, BEFORE running this snippet, predict what it will output....

# Set environment variables
$$=\$,;$,=$;


# Begin POD documentation
=cut
;
; # Usage:
; #   require "script.pl";
;     print "\"You are $$$,\" said the coach.";
;
=cut
# Above Line Ends POD


# Send the user some output
print "Just Another Perl Hacker";
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Comment on Cheap obfu: or is it? Download Code

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(zdog) Re: Cheap obfu: or is it? by zdog (Priest) on Jun 23, 2002 at 18:24 UTC
That's a pretty cute trick. Sorta reminds me of "Things are not what they seem like.". The key here is that the second assignment doesn't really end until the 6th line from the top. So the string `'cut'` is assigned to `$,`. For the record: I did not guess the output before I ran the script. :-) Good stuff. Zenon Zabinski \| zdog \| zdog@perlmonk.org	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: (zdog) Re: Cheap obfu: or is it? by mt2k (Hermit) on Jun 23, 2002 at 19:36 UTC
zdog++ for being able to find the node I could not come up with. Things are not what they seem like. is the node I based it on. When I saw that node, I kind of thought "yeah, that second line with the POD is cool, but a 'cut' would look much better." Then I remembered the whole thing of barewords being "allowed" in assignments. So I built upon that and the reason you never see the output of `print "Just Another Perl Hacker";` is because the actual POD doesn't start until the second occurence of '=cut', since the first is really an assignment to a variable! :)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Cheap obfu: or is it? by janx (Monk) on Jun 25, 2002 at 22:51 UTC
Well.... it prints Modification of a read-only value attempted at - line 1. At least since perl@17272 (the earliest since 5.6.0) I have at my fingertips right now ;-) Kay	[reply]