Scalar context changes bareword value?

[crenz]

broquaint, thanks for the research. It seems you found the phenomenon causing the problem.

Fletch, I would expect for the bareword to stay the same, even in scalar context. If I change sub 1 to

sub sub1(*) {
    print "args(1): @_\n";
    print scalar $_[0], "\n";
    sub2(@_);
}

the second value printed is Bareword and not 1.

So am I misunderstanding the spec here, or is it a bug?

[Fletch]

The bareword is the same in scalar context, however the array @_ in scalar context is another matter. @_ itself hasn't changed, but when you pass it to sub2 it's put in scalar context ("*" is behaving similarly to "$" in this case).

[crenz]

Thanks for the explanation! I can just pass $_[0] in this situation, which should make it work. However, if there would be multiple parameters and I wanted to pass @_ as a whole, there'd be a problem :(.

[Fletch]

Well, not a problem but you'd have to call it as sub2( $_[0]  => @_[1..$#_] ). Then again, you play with prototypes you're going to get burned. Or was that matches . . .