Today I stumbled across a curious problem with my Perl code. I tried the following expression:

print shift sort @array;
[download]

which the interpreter rejected with the complaint

Type of arg 1 to shift must be array (not sort) at script.pl line 7, n
+ear "@array;"
[download]

However, the following does work as desired:

my @a = ( 4, 1, 3, 2 );
my @b = sort @a;
print shift @b;
[download]

So far, I was under the impression that

1. sort @a returns an array, namely the sorted version of @a.
2. shift takes an array as argument and returns a scalar.
[download]

Based on the interpreter's feedback I now realise my previous Perl world view must have been faulty in some respect.
Can anybody please enlighten me as to where the problem with the first code snippet above is?

Thanks and regards -

Pat

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