Scalar context changes bareword value?

broquaint, thanks for the research. It seems you found the phenomenon causing the problem.

Fletch, I would expect for the bareword to stay the same, even in scalar context. If I change sub 1 to

sub sub1(*) {
    print "args(1): @_\n";
    print scalar $_[0], "\n";
    sub2(@_);
}
[download]

the second value printed is Bareword and not 1.

So am I misunderstanding the spec here, or is it a bug?

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Re: Scalar context changes bareword value? by Fletch (Bishop) on Apr 22, 2004 at 13:30 UTC
The bareword is the same in scalar context, however the array `@_` in scalar context is another matter. `@_` itself hasn't changed, but when you pass it to `sub2` it's put in scalar context ("*" is behaving similarly to "$" in this case).	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Scalar context changes bareword value? by crenz (Priest) on Apr 22, 2004 at 13:35 UTC
Thanks for the explanation! I can just pass `$_[0]` in this situation, which should make it work. However, if there would be multiple parameters and I wanted to pass `@_` as a whole, there'd be a problem :(.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Scalar context changes bareword value? by Fletch (Bishop) on Apr 22, 2004 at 13:45 UTC
Well, not a problem but you'd have to call it as `sub2( $_[0] => @_[1..$#_] )`. Then again, you play with prototypes you're going to get burned. Or was that matches . . .	[reply] [d/l]