in reply to Different behaviour of 'stat' function after assignment to $! (errno).

$! is the extended O/S error. It isn't intended to be written to. Perl tends to be quite a permissive language. But if Perl lends you a loaded gun, is it Perl's fault if you aim at your foot and pull the trigger?

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  • Comment on Re: Different behaviour of 'stat' function after assignment to $! (errno).

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Re^2: Different behaviour of 'stat' function after assignment to $! (errno).
by ikegami (Patriarch) on May 24, 2011 at 17:10 UTC

    Writing to errno both directly and via $! aren't new, and there's no need to avoid doing so. 

    $ perl -E'say $!=2'
No such file or directory

$ perl -E'say $!=3'
No such process

$ perl -E'say $!=4'
Interrupted system call

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Re^2: Different behaviour of 'stat' function after assignment to $! (errno).
by muxxum (Initiate) on May 24, 2011 at 15:45 UTC
    Well, when -$! is not the same as 0-$! then I'd say that it's open to discussion. ;)
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      I was addressing assigning to it as being the main issue, but I wouldn't negate it either as a general rule, because it certainly doesn't have to be numeric.

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[reply]
        If that were the case, then $ERRNO should not say
        If used numerically, yields the current value of the C errno variable
        and
        You can assign a number to $! to set errno
        The OP did nothing unreasonable. ikegami has settled the matter, in my opinion. It was a bug, it has been fixed.
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