The precedence for || is pretty high. Your unlink would give a list context for glob(), but || gives it a scalar context instead. What you wrote is parsed as:

unlink ( glob(...) || print "..." );
[download]

This might show what's going on a little more:

sub print_context {
    my $wa = wantarray;
    print $wa ? 'list' : defined $wa ? 'scalar' : 'void';
    print "\n";
    return $wa ? (1, 2) : 'x';
}

print "with || :\n";
print print_context() || print "error";
print "\n";

print "with or :\n";
print print_context() or print "error";
print "\n";
__END__
with || :
scalar
x
with or :
list
12
[download]

Anyway, the short answer is to use or instead of ||, or use parentheses around the argument to unlink. These should work:

unlink( glob(...) ) || print "...";

unlink glob(...) or print "...";
[download]

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.