I ran into something non-intutitive and boiled my code down to this. The script does slightly different things within the map statement when run with none, 1, or two args. With two args, the last input line is empty. In that case, a scalar $N is assigned an expression @a1..0 within the map statement. Why does this happen and how do I avoid the issue? Thanks. 
#! /usr/bin/perl
# perltest Demo of problem
# Usage:
# perltest
# perltest 1
# perltest 1 2

$ARG1 = shift();
$ARG2 = shift();

open(F,$0);
$c = 0;
map {
  print "TRACE $_";
  $c++;
  my @a = (1);
  my @b = @a[1..0];
  if    ( $ARG1 and $ARG2 ) { $N = @a[1..0]; }
  elsif ( $ARG1           ) { $N = @b;       }
} <F>;
close(F);

print "\nCOUNT = $c N = /$N/\n";
exit 0;

#WATCH FOR THIS LINE!

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In reply to Assignment changes handle? by jw47

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