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From: blarsen@spider.uio.no (Bjorn Larsen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Semicolon? What semicolon?
Message-ID: <BLARSEN.91Jan10230834@spider.uio.no>
Date: 10 Jan 91 22:08:34 GMT
References: <1991Jan10.173933.26134@convex.com>
Sender: news@ulrik.uio.no (USENET News System)
Reply-To: Bjorn.Larsen@usit.uio.no
Organization: University of Oslo, Norway
Lines: 19
In-Reply-To: tchrist@convex.com's message of 10 Jan 91 17:39:33 GMT


Playing around with Tom's reported scalar split strangeness,
I came up with this weirdo:

 ulrik $ perl -ne '$a=('
 syntax error in file /tmp/perl-ea28951 at line 2, next token ";"
 Execution of /tmp/perl-ea28951 aborted due to compilation errors.
 ulrik $

Obviously the perl code is meaningless, but what on earth
is the ";" doing there?

[ My guess is that Perl implements -e by tacking on a ";" at the end
  of the Perl code if it is missing -- if I remember right that was
  added by Larry to please Randal some time ago -- but the error message
  still can be rather confusing to someone who didn't overhear the
  discussion way back then. ]

- bjorn