Sorry, but not entirely true. If you remove precedence, then things get evaluated in a different order:
foo() + bar() + baz() 1 2 3 4 5
The following script proves this:
#! /usr/bin/perl use strict; package Foo; use overload '+' => sub { my ($self, $other) = @_; print "Evaluating $self + $other\n"; return Foo->new($$self + $$other); }, '0+' => sub {my $self = shift; $$self}, '""' => sub {my $self = shift; $$self}; sub new { my $class = shift; my $obj = \shift; print "Creating $$obj\n"; bless $obj, $class; } package main; Foo->new(1) + Foo->new(2) + Foo->new(4); __END__ Creating 1 Creating 2 Evaluating 1 + 2 Creating 3 Creating 4 Evaluating 3 + 4 Creating 7
That said, it looks like Perl likes to evaluate binary operations by evaluating the left hand side, then the right hand side, then performing the operation. (As you found, = is an exception.) With that order, the fundamental operands will generally go left to right. The order of the intermediate operations can generally be predicted fairly easily from perlop.

That said there are some points of precedence that are officially not documented. But that's because it is easier to say it is not documented than it is to explain why

my $foo = 0; print ++$foo + $foo++;
prints 3. (At least with Perl 5.8.)

The reason is that you evaluate the pre-increment that turns $foo into 1 then return $foo. You copy the existing value into a temp, then increment $foo again. You then add $foo (now 2) to its old value (1) to get 3. While there is no need to change this, anyone who depends on it deserves the worst of what they might get at some future date.


In reply to Re^4: Will "$_[0]=shift" always resolve shift first? by tilly
in thread Will "$_[0]=shift" always resolve shift first? by kyle

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.