I encountered something interesting today that has me puzzled. I received this warning message:

Bareword found where operator expected at dcwatcherd line 465, 
    near "$LOG _timestamp"
        (Missing operator before _timestamp?)

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referring to this line of code:

print $LOG _timestamp(), q{  }, join ':', $0, $msg_level, $msg;

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The first thing I tried worked--I modified the line of code as follows:

print $LOG q{}, _timestamp(), q{  }, join ':', $0, $msg_level, $msg;

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My question is: "Why would Perl warn 'Bareword found where operator expected' when it encountered the function call immediately following the indirect filehandle?"

A few things to note:
  1. There was no warning, and everything worked fine, when I used a bareword filehandle e.g., print LOG _timestamp(), ...
  2. Everything works fine with the indirect filehandle as long as I put something before the function call.
  3. Everything works fine on a newer (5.8.8) version of Perl, on my development platform, without having to make this change.

Comments/questions appreciated --Akoya

In reply to Bareword warning question by Akoya

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