So I'm coding a simple backup restore utility and I get a bizarre error message:

   File '-4294967295' does not exist.

But after staring at the code for 10 minutes I still don't see how the filename is getting replaced with a number. Here's the relevent block: 

  my $file = shift @ARGV;
  die "Backup filename '$file' should end in .kba or .kba.gz.\n"
    unless $file =-~ /kba\.gz$/ or $file =~ /\.kba$/;
  die "File '$file' does not exist.\n" 
    unless -e $file;

[download]

Then, at last, I see it - I'm using the =-~ operator rather than the =~ operator! Perl has taken my typo and turned it into an attempt to negate the bitwise inverse of the result of running a regex against $_. Sheesh!

-sam

In reply to An Insane Typo Bug by samtregar

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