Chapter 2 of the Camel Book uses the term 'interpolative context' to describe what goes in inside of double quotes.

If an object member function returns a string in scalar context then should it behave similarly in interpolative context?

It would seem logical to me that it should, yet my experience is that it does not, e.g.: 

my $parser = new XML::DOM::Parser;
my $doc = $parser->parse("<hello></hello>");
my $root = $doc->getFirstChild;
my $rootName = $root->getNodeName; 
print  $root->getNodeName . "\n"; # prints 'hello' in scalar context
print "$root->getNodeName\n"; # prints gibberish in interpolative cont
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Why the difference? Is this a design flaw in Perl, or am I misunderstanding what is going on?

Shouldn't the scalar return value of the getNodeName member function appear in both scalar and interpolative context?

In reply to Unusual Behavior in Interpolative Context by sierrathedog04

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