This is a prime example of why I preach so heavily about use strict;. If you had invoked that pragma you'd have seen the warning: 

Use of uninitialized value $_ in print at sopw-simple.pl line 6.

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Quoting from Gabor Szabo on his website http://perl5maven.com/the-default-variable-of-perl: 
In Perl, several functions and operators use this variable as a default, in case no parameter is explicitly used. In general, I'd say you should NOT see $_ in real code. I think the whole point of $_ is that you don't have to write it explicitly.

Well, except when you do.

Having a default variable is a very powerful idea, but using it incorrectly can reduce the readability of your code.
Just for grins I tried: 
$_ = "TestA" or "TestB";

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and Perl was not happy with that issuing: 
Found = in conditional, should be == at ./sopw-simple.pl line 4.
Useless use of a constant (TestB) in void context at ./sopw-simple.pl 
+line 4.
TestA

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My suggestion is read the web page I provided above for some hints on what you can and can't do with $_. Just a thought...

Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional
Peter -at- Berghold -dot- Net; AOL IM redcowdawg Yahoo IM: blue_cowdawg

In reply to Re: Implicit assignment to $_ by blue_cowdawg
in thread Implicit assignment to $_ by SimplySimple

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