Hi together,

I stumbled across this problem today, while looking at some code using Test::Simple. The following test always passes, even if the string doesn't match: 

ok(sub{$str =~ /abc/}, "string matches");

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Now I can easily rewrite this test to: 

ok($str =~ /abc/, "string matches");

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Now it will only pass in case the string really matches. Problem solved.

But the question I'm really asking myself here is why did it pass in the first time? I wrote this simple example program: 

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
(sub {my $str = "aaa"; $str =~ m/abc/}) ? print "sub ok\n" : print "su
+b fail\n";
get_return() ? print "return ok\n" : print "return fail\n";
sub get_return
{
    my $str = "aaa";
    $str =~ m/abc/;
}

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The output is: 
sub ok
return fail

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Can someone help me understand why the result of the anonymous (?) sub is true and the result of the regular sub is false?

In reply to Return value of a sub by elTriberium

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