Can you give a reference to the pre-5.8.5 bug? I recall there being a bug fixed where 3-arg substr misbehaved if the same call was used in both lvalue and non-lvalue mode, but that sounds like a different case than you describe.

In reply to Re^4: lhs substr(): refs vs. scalars by ysth
in thread lhs substr(): refs vs. scalars by renodino

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