Thanks. Putting it in array context -- i.e. @{glob("$_/f*")} - did the trick. I changed the code to:

perl -wE 'use Data::Dumper;print Dumper grep(@{[glob("$_/f*")]},("dir1
+", "dir2", "dir3"))'
[download]

The code seems to work with that change but I just want to check that there is no need to explicitly check "if the list has at least one element" since presumably evaluating the list (by grep) will determine if it is empty or not.

I'm still not really sure why scalar context doesn't work (indeed, I would have thought scalar context would be better than list context). The stateful carry over part seems to be weird if not buggy. But as long as it works for me by forcing an array context, then it's all good even if it was far from obvious at first glance.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.