I have come across an oddity while performing some development work with Perl 5.6.1 which I cannot explain - The oddity is highlighted by the following segment of code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Data::Dumper;

my $test = Test->new;
print Dumper( $test->test );

exit 0;


package Test;

use strict;

sub new
{
    return bless {}, shift;
}

sub test
{
}

1;

__END__

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Under 5.8.0 this script outputs nothing (as I would expect) - However under 5.6.1, the call to the package method test results in the return of the class object. For example:

bluebottle:~# perl test.pl
$VAR1 = bless( {}, 'Test' );

[download]

I have not had a chance as yet to test this with Activestate builds or older versions of Perl. Whilst this isn't a real issue holding up my development work, it is something which I am at a loss to explain. Can anyone enlighten me on this one?

 

perl -le 'print+unpack"N",pack"B32","00000000000000000000001001111010"'

In reply to Return values from package methods by rob_au

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