Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: print @ar; bug or feature
Message-ID: <8319@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 7 Jun 90 16:52:27 GMT
References: <1990Jun7.031545.27669@athena.mit.edu>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 23

In article <1990Jun7.031545.27669@athena.mit.edu> ccount@athena.mit.edu (Craig A Counterman) writes:
: Is this a bug?  It doesn't matter much to me, but someone pointed it
: out, an now I really would like to know why this is so.
: 
: perl -e '$ar[0] = 3;$ar[3] = 5;$\="\n";print @ar;print "@ar";'
: 
: prints "33   5".  Why?  It prints @ar only till it hits an undefined
: element, but interpolating the @ar in a string constant works as it
: should.  print @ar also fails to print the newline.

It's a bug, and will be fixed in the next patch.

: It looks like 'print @ar' is at some point expanding to
: "3\000\000\0005\n", and only the part till the first nul is being
: printed.

Something like that.  Actually, the routine that prints each element of
the array was returning FALSE if you tried to print a non-existent element
when it should have returned TRUE, so the array value printer aborted
in the middle with what it thought was an error.  Hmm, I obviously need
some coffee.

Larry