It was a small surprise to me, therefore, that [local $fred = $fred ? "Still $fred" : 'undef' ;] sets $fred to 'Still 78'

Although it's not documented, all Perl operators except assignment operators evaluate their operands in left-to-right order. Assignment operators evaluate their RHS before their LHS. 

sub d :lvalue { print("$_[0]\n"); $_[1] }

d("LHS", 4   ) + d("RHS", 5);  # LHS, RHS
d("LHS", $var) = d("RHS", 1);  # RHS, LHS

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This was specifically done to handle expressions of the form f($var) = g($var). That's why $x = $x + 1 works. That's why my $x = $x; works.

which leaves me wondering where the contradiction is

Sorry, I missed the bold portion in "This second turns out to be essential in order to use local to automatically restore the $SIG state on forced exit (die) from an eval."

In reply to Re^9: Setting signal handlers considered unsafe? by ikegami
in thread Setting signal handlers considered unsafe? by gnosek

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