comment on

system returning true on failure, false on success. I know why it's doing that, I know where it's coming from (and that's why), but it still makes me gag each and every time I use it.
open not returning a file handle, but modifying its first argument. There are other functions modifying their first argument (push and friends, 4-arg substr, chomp/chop), but you kind of expect those. open doing so seems to do it for no other reason of mimicing the underlaying C functionality.
Perl has every important flow control keyword used by other important languages, and then some. But it doesn't have a (native) switch. Or rather, it still doesn't have one. While it was on the wishlist of perl 1.0.0.
Ok, so Perl has this IO system that used to be a thin layer over your systems IO system, and now (with PerlIO) mimics it, but still looks the same. And while I can easily lock entire files, why can't I easily lock file regions on systems that support it?

perl -wce 'chomp ($_)'
-e syntax OK
perl -wce '$_ = log ($_)'
-e syntax OK
perl -wce 'print ($_)'
print (...) interpreted as function at -e line 1.
-e syntax OK
perl -wce 'print  ($_)'
-e syntax OK
[download]

Warn (wrongly) for one particular function, if you have exactly one space between the function name and the opening paren?

In reply to Re: Perl oddities by Anonymous Monk
in thread Perl oddities by brian_d_foy

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