Just when I thought I understand the || operator, I've run into a case I don't fully understand. Could someone explain why Perl is working like this? This is with Perl 5.8. 

# 1. with extra parens, works as expected
(($a,$b) = (qw/a b/)) || die;
 print "a: $a b: $b\n ";

# 2. without || or parens, works as expected
($a,$b) = (qw/a b/);
 print "a: $a b: $b\n ";

# 3. without parens, but with ||, $a is set to 'b'
# and $b is not set. Why?
 ($a,$b) = (qw/a b/) || die;
 print "a: $a b: $b\n ";

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Thanks!

Mark

In reply to question about || operator and list context by markjugg

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