in reply to RE: RE: RE: Re: require problems
in thread require problems

But what is really special about "0 but true" is that it becomes 0 in a numeric context without a warning.
ding ding ding ding, that's what I was looking for!

And now for trivia question 2, "why is this so?"

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

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RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Re: require problems
by mirod (Canon) on Sep 19, 2000 at 22:19 UTC

    Is that a Perl feature or just because whatever the C function that turns strings into number is it likes the fact that it starts with a 0 and doesn't complain about the rest of the string? In which case "0 but" would be OK too?

[reply]

      The Perl code that converts strings to integers specifically checks for "0 but true". "0 but True" will generate a warning in a numeric context, for example: 

        % perl -we "print 0+'0 but True'"
  Argument "0 but True" isn't numeric in addition (+) at -e line 1.
  0
  % perl -we "print 0+'0 but true'"
  0

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