perlquestion vsespb <code> #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my $errors = undef; sub ok { my( $test, $name ) = @_; print "[[[$test]]] [[[$name]]]\n"; }; ok( ($errors && ($errors->[0] =~ /Journal file not found/i)), "some text 1 $errors->[0]" ); ok( ($errors && ($errors->[0] =~ /Journal file not found/i)), "some text 2 $errors->[0]" ); </code> prints the following: <code> Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at poc.pl line 14. [[[ARRAY(0x137cd48)]]] [[[some text 1 ]]] Use of uninitialized value in pattern match (m//) at poc.pl line 15. Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at poc.pl line 15. Use of uninitialized value $name in concatenation (.) or string at poc.pl line 11. [[[some text 2 ]]] [[[]]] </code> and by the way this code (with modified 'some text' strings) <code> #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my $errors = undef; sub ok { my( $test, $name ) = @_; print "[[[$test]]] [[[$name]]]\n"; }; ok( ($errors && ($errors->[0] =~ /Journal file not found/i)), "some text 1" ); ok( ($errors && ($errors->[0] =~ /Journal file not found/i)), "some text 2" ); </code> prints correct result: <code> Use of uninitialized value $test in concatenation (.) or string at poc.pl line 11. [[[]]] [[[some text 1]]] Use of uninitialized value $test in concatenation (.) or string at poc.pl line 11. [[[]]] [[[some text 2]]] </code> perl 5.10.1 under Linux