Can someone explain to me why this is. Is the ternary operator some kind of list operator in disguise? Why does the context of shift need to be so explicit.

# WRONG! at least in 5.8.5 - context is ambiguous?
my $thing = shift ? 1: 0

#RIGHT!
$thing = shift() ? 1 : 0

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if someone can point to the book that explains this, I would be greatful, otherwise it's a bug in my eyes because '?' is an operator and the interpretor upon hitting that operator as such and not a token should decipher the context of the shift.

Dec 19, 2025 at 00:29 UTC McDarren Moved from Snippets Section to SOPW

In reply to Use of shift in Ternary Operator by cheruvim

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