I'm a bit confused because when overload is triggered, it appears to be passing 'undef':

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
                                                                      
+          
package SomeClass;
use Data::Dumper;
                                                                      
+          

use overload '""' => \&name;
sub new {
   return bless {}, shift;
}
                                                                      
+          
sub name {
    print Dumper \@_;
    my $self = shift;
    $self->{NAME} = shift if @_;
    return $self->{NAME};
}
                                                                      
+          
package main;
my $thing = SomeClass->new;
$thing->name('TestObj');
print "Implicit: my name is $thing\n";
[download]

That gives the following output:

$VAR1 = [
          bless( {}, 'SomeClass' ),
          'TestObj'
        ];
$VAR1 = [
          bless( {
                   'NAME' => 'TestObj'
                 }, 'SomeClass' ),
          undef,
          ''
        ];
Implicit: my name is
[download]

We can clearly see 'undef' is being passed and that's what's throwing off your conditional. This is so counter-intuitive that I assume I'm missing something, though a quick scan through the docs doesn't reveal what that would be.

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