http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=195892


in reply to Re: Re^2: The High Price of Golf, and A Surprise
in thread The High Price of Golf, and A Surprise

The output would have been empty then; it is apparently not considered a NOP either:
$ perl -MO=Deparse,x7 -e'1;' '???'; -e syntax OK
('???' is what B::Deparse produces when something gets optimized away.) I'm guessing that's because a sort may have side effects f.ex with tied arrays or inside the callback (if there is one), or something to that effect.

Makeshifts last the longest.