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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Function return type conversion bug
Message-ID: <7221@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 28 Feb 90 22:57:25 GMT
References: <1990Feb28.130139.2942@axion.bt.co.uk>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 18

In article <1990Feb28.130139.2942@axion.bt.co.uk> nwinton@axion.bt.co.uk writes:
: This is a bit of a strange one.  Under certain circumstances, perl seems
: to fail to convert an integer return value into a string.  I'm afraid
: I haven't been able to narrow it down too closely, but attached is a
: fairly small program that exercises the bug.

Fixed.

Actually, it didn't have anything to do with whether the value was numeric,
but with whether the value was clobbered in restoring a local().  Since
the value for $r . '' is stored in a different place than the value of
$r itself, it didn't get clobbered on the return.

The bug was hidden before this because it didn't show up unless a routine
mixed returns and non-returns.  Say "return $r;" also worked around
the problem.

Larry