Aha. Guess I should have RTFM. It contradicts my usually-accurate intuition about how list/scalar context works in Perl, so I hope I can be forgiven.

My real-life code that inspired this question goes something like this: 

my $count = my ($arg1, $arg2, $arg3) = split /\s+/, $argstring;
$count == 3 or die "3 arguments expected; you supplied $count\n";

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So if I want the real argument count, I have to split into a temporary array first, or else use a dummy trailing array in the assignment list. Gross.

I can't say I care for this feature. Smells like premature optimization to me. And I notice it doesn't work across function calls. That could be a nasty surprise for someone someday.

In reply to Re^2: List assignment in scalar context by Grimnebulin
in thread List assignment in scalar context by Grimnebulin

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