[Melbourne-pm] Simple(?) question involving backticks and die

[Scott Penrose]

Precedence really.

By doing this... "blah" || "blah"

You are saying you want one or other the scalars above. Therefore it  
returns in scalar context.

By using "or" you are lowering the precedence and thus it no longer  
treats it in scalar, but rather array context.

It is generally safer to use "or" unless you want to return the value.

eg:
	my $b = executethis() || "default value";

if you want to die then

	my $b = executethis() or die("ahh, it broke!");

Scott

On 05/01/2006, at 16:33, Benji Wakely wrote:

>
> On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 16:27:29 +1100 (EST),
> Tim Connors <tconnors+pmmelb at astro.swin.edu.au> wrote:
>
>>>   my @list = `/bin/ls /home` || die ("Couldn't list files");
>>
>> Aren't you meant to use "or" rather than "||" when using die, for
>> precedence reasons?  Could this be what is happening? `` becomes  
>> scalar
>> context when combined with the ||  ?
>
> That checks out, and now I'll happily use 'or' rather than '||'
> in this situation.
>
> ...Wish I knew why it was so, though.
>
> --
> Benji Wakely
>
> _______________________________________________
> Melbourne-pm mailing list
> Melbourne-pm at pm.org
> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/melbourne-pm

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