I've downvoted this node and considered it for deletion, on the grounds that:

• the question is stupid;
• the poster would seem not to have done any research to answer the question himself
• the poster deliberately chose a meaningless title

Let me explain those. First of all, trying to print a meaningless string of operators *with nothing to operate on* is clearly not going to do anything useful. The exact mechanics of why it does nothing as opposed to blowing up in your face will become clear once a trivial amount of diagnostics are performed, such as by adding -Mwarnings

Second, it is good practice when asking people to help you for free to at least tell them how you have tried to help yourself. For example, you could say "I tried turning on warnings but I don't understand all that stuff about unquoted strings".

Third, "what gives" gives potential readers precisely no clue as to what you are asking about. For all I knew before looking, you might have been about to ask why your algorithm for calculating the length of great circle routes wasn't working. I consider nodes to have their titles changed quite often, but at least in those cases the poster has *tried* to choose a good title, and I can only think of a better one because I understand the problem better. You, however, chose to deliberately obfuscate. That to me indicates that you're not really serious about finding out "what gives".