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From: mayer@sono.uucp (Ronald &)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: strange (IMHO) eval behavior
Message-ID: <MAYER.91May30150835@porky.sono.uucp>
Date: 30 May 91 22:08:35 GMT
Sender: mayer@sono.uucp (Ronald Mayer)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Acuson; Mountain View, California
Lines: 23


Could someone please explain what's going on in these examples?

% perl -e '@a = eval ("*\n"); print "@a\n";'
[A bunch of random control characters which don't mean anything to me.]

% perl -e '@a = eval ("*\n"); print "@a";'
*main'

In neither case is $@ set to anything.  Even if the second case is
supposed to mean something, I'm at a total loss to explain the first
one.  [BTW: sparc 1,SunOS 4.1, perl 4.0 patch 3]

My guess: It's probably somehow related to this section of the manual,
          but I can't figure out how or why:
>     Since a *name value contains unprintable binary data, if  it
>     is  used as an argument in a print, or as a %s argument in a
>     printf or sprintf, it then has the value '*name', just so it
>     prints out pretty.

    Thanks,
    Ron Mayer
    sun!sono!mayer  mayer@sono.uucp