Even if it wasn't magical, it still wouldn't stop at that line. The two-character string being returned, 0␊, is true. The magic only matters when the last line of the file consists of a 0 without a terminating Line Feed. (It could also happen when $/ = \1;.)

(Oops, the main point of this has already been mentioned a couple of times below, though this post still brings in new information.)

In reply to Re^2: truth in while condition by ikegami
in thread truth in while condition by TISON

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