Void repeat propagates the calling context to its lhs

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Migrated from rt.perl.org#123020 (status was 'open')

Searchable as RT123020$

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From @cpansprout

If x with parentheses around the lhs occurs in void context, no matter where it occurs in a sub it will propagate the context in which the sub was called​:

$ ./perl -lIlib -e 'sub c { print qw[void scalar list][wantarray + defined wantarray] } sub f { (c())x(c()); print "---"; } f(); $_=f(); () = f() '
void
scalar

---

scalar
scalar

---

list
scalar

---

That’s *weird*. But what should it do? Internally, x falls back to scalar repeat when not in list context. (It doesn’t check explicitly for scalar context.) So scalar context here would make sense. (I suspect some instances of the void context result in stack bugs.)

--

Father Chrysostomos

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From @cpansprout

On Mon Oct 20 20​:21​:28 2014, sprout wrote​:

If x with parentheses around the lhs occurs in void context, no matter
where it occurs in a sub it will propagate the context in which the
sub was called​:

$ ./perl -lIlib -e 'sub c { print qw[void scalar list][wantarray +
defined wantarray] } sub f { (c())x(c()); print "---"; } f(); $_=f();
() = f() '
void
scalar
---
scalar
scalar
---
list
scalar
---

That’s *weird*. But what should it do? Internally, x falls back to
scalar repeat when not in list context. (It doesn’t check explicitly
for scalar context.) So scalar context here would make sense. (I
suspect some instances of the void context result in stack bugs.)

I was right about the stack bug, which I fixed a while ago in 3a100da.

I have just fixed this bug for the most part in commit 1e2dd51, by applying scalar context to the lhs if the repetition is known to be in void context at compile time. At the end of a subroutine it still exhibits the buggy behaviour.

--

Father Chrysostomos

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The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'