Re: Is this normal

[JavaFan]

in reply to Is this normal

You're making two mistakes:

1. You're calling the match in list context, so an empty list is returned, reducing the number of passed parameters.
2. Even when called in scalar context, a non-match does not return 0. It returns the empty string (most Perl build-ins that return either a true or a false value, return 1 or "")

[dave_the_m]

a non-match does not return 0. It returns the empty string

Strictly speaking, it returns PL_sv_no, which has both a numerical value of 0 and a string value of "":

$ perl5140 -MDevel::Peek -e 'Dump scalar(/x/)'
SV = PVNV(0x275ee10) at 0xa26500
  REFCNT = 2147483647
  FLAGS = (IOK,NOK,POK,READONLY,pIOK,pNOK,pPOK)
  IV = 0
  NV = 0
  PV = 0x275ee00 ""\0
  CUR = 0
  LEN = 16

Dave.

[JavaFan]

You are correct. However, the OP is printing out the values, so the string value will be taken.