An interesting question (and a potential breadcrumb-path to enlightenment) would have been to ask what was happening to all those newlines. Three print statements in a row with cmp, each with a newline, and the output is "-11-1". Wha...?!?

In any event, using the O and B::Deparse modules allows you to see what Perl thinks about the code you have written. 

>perl -wMstrict -MO=Deparse,-p -e
"my $c = shift @ARGV;
 ;;
 sub main()
 {
      print qq{cmp Compare:\n};
      print 'a' cmp 'b'.qq{\n};
      print 'b' cmp 'a'.qq{\n};
      print 'a' cmp 'a'.qq{\n};
      ;;
      print 'a' cmp 'b'.$c;
 }
"
BEGIN { $^W = 1; }
use strict 'refs';
(my $c = shift(@ARGV));
sub main () {
    use strict 'refs';
    print("cmp Compare:\n");
    print((-1));
    print(1);
    print((-1));
    print(('a' cmp ('b' . $c)));
}
-e syntax OK

[download]

As you see, most of the cmp expressions don't even survive compilation, being reduced to compile-time constants (because that's essentially how they started out). Only the last print statement gives Perl something to chew on at run time, and it's possible to clearly see there the precedence of operator evaluation.

In reply to Re: Newbie flabbergasted by string compare results by AnomalousMonk
in thread Newbie flabbergasted by string compare results by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.