Re^2: The best "true zero" is...

[ambrus]

in reply to Re: The best "true zero" is...
in thread The best "true zero" is...

No, it's really the string "0 but true". Try this for example:

use File::Temp; $th = File::Temp::tempfile(undef, "UNLINK", 1); $zbt =
+ sysseek $th, 0, 0; print $zbt, "\n";

The "E0" suffix appears with the flip-flop operators, but "0E0" can never appear, only "1E0", "2E0" etc.

[mce]

true, but also not true :-)

Many functions -like the execute function in DBI- return 0E0 when they want to return a result that is ment to be zero but is 'boolean' true in tests

So, indeed it is not general perl, but it is common to use 0E0 as "zero but true".

Cheers,

[ambrus]

That's right, but the core perl uses only "0 but true", so "0E0" is not Larry's.