I've had code which uses substr($foo, n, n) = ''; as an rvalue. And I'm sure others have had code which used this too. If this usage is considered a bug and Perl was resultingly changed, then this code will be broken. And this code wasn't written on a bug - it was written on undefined behaviour. As such, then any change to the perl implementation should be considered a core language change.

With Perl 5 coming towards the latter half it's usage, is it sensible to be making core language changes? Surly it would just make more sense to define this behaviour - and change the documentation to reflect this difference.

tlhf
Just wanting to be able to upgrade Perl5 without fear of code breakage.

In reply to A Bug in the Documentation or in Perl? by tlhf
in thread [substr] anomaly or mine? by BrowserUk

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