Ok, now that just confuses the fuck out me.

Obviously this is a convoluted use of my and so I shouldn't worry about it too much. But these results don't match the explanation you gave earlier. If the theory is that both $a and $b get assigned a lexical at the beginning of the sub, than $a should be undef every sub call.

$a=1;
$b=2;
sub x {
    my (0?$a:$b) = shift;
    print"a=$a\nb=$b\n";
    $a=shift
}
x(3,30);
x(4,40);
x(5,50);
__END__
#Output
a=
b=3
a=30
b=4
a=40
b=5

[download]

In reply to Re^5: my (0?$a:$b): a koan by wind
in thread my (0?$a:$b): a koan by educated_foo

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.