Unquoted strings with strict

[robin]

You can assign an unquoted string to a variable, even when strict mode is on, like this:

use warnings;
use strict;

my $foo = hello =>;
print $foo;

(This is more of an obfuscation than a request for enlightenment, but the Obfuscated code section seems to be reserved for complete obfuscated programs. Sorry if this is in the wrong place.)

[premchai21]

This is documented, and used most often in hashes, like this:

%hash = ( foo => 'bar', # note 'foo' not needed
          bar => 'baz',
          baz => 'foo',
          items => 3 );
print $hash{items};     # note 'items' not needed

The => acts like a special sort of comma, which quotes barewords on the left; barewords are also quoted in hash lookups.

[Vavoom]

Technically, => quotes its left side argument, making this:

my $foo = hello =>;

equivalent to this:

my $foo = 'hello',;


Vavoom

[kwoff]

I think it is a quoted string, though, because of the => operator. Maybe it's only a matter of semantics, though.

[robin]

It's arguable, I suppose. Maybe it's better to use => consistently:

use warnings;
use strict;

;my $foo      =>
;$foo = hello =>
;print $foo   =>

(updated for symmetry)

[tadman]

This seems to be some sort of magical property of the arrow operator. Any alphanumeric+underscore type text before it is recognized as an unquoted string, and this even applies to text inside curly braces, such as:

foo => $x   same as: 'foo' => $x
$x{foo}     same as: $x{'foo'}