Re^3: substr oddity

[BrowserUk]

Fair enough, but your snippet also doesn't crash on my machine for exactly the same reasons:

>perl # 5.8.4
use strict;
use warnings;
my $x="";
foo( substr($x,2,1) ); # crashes here
print "Alive!\n"; # not reached
sub foo {}
^Z
substr outside of string at - line 4.

>c:\perl561\bin\perl5.6.1.exe
use strict;
use warnings;
my $x="";
foo( substr($x,2,1) ); # crashes here
print "Alive!\n"; # not reached
sub foo {}
^Z
substr outside of string at - line 4.

[Anonymous Monk]

Okay, I'm confused... is that your entire output? Was the word "Alive" in there somewhere?

It should print "Alive!" if the code doesn't crash. I don't see that in your output. If that's your entire output, then you get what I do: a crash on the substr() call. Similarly, you'll get the same kind of crash if you assign to substr(): that is, treat it like an Lvalue.

My guess is that because @_ can be assigned to, substr() behaves like an Lvalue when passed as a subroutine argument. If that's true, it's odd enough to be an oddity. :-)
--
Ytrew

[BrowserUk]

Yep! That's the entire output. I've added a couple of print $]; statements, one in an END{} block, to these to show that I get some output, which means that STDOUT must be being flushed, which I assume is a clean-up time operation:

P:\test>perl -l
END{ print $] }
print $];
use strict;
use warnings;
my $x="";
foo( substr($x,2,1) ); # crashes here
print "Alive!\n"; # not reached
sub foo {}
^Z
5.008004
substr outside of string at - line 6.
5.008004

P:\test>c:\perl561\bin\perl5.6.1.exe -l
END{ print $] }
print $];
use strict;
use warnings;
my $x="";
foo( substr($x,2,1) ); # crashes here
print "Alive!\n"; # not reached
sub foo {}
^Z
5.006001
substr outside of string at - line 6.
5.006001

P:\test>

However, if I remove the subcall from the picture:

P:\test>perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $x="";
print substr($x,2,1); # crashes here
print "Alive!\n"; # not reached
^Z
substr outside of string at - line 4.
Use of uninitialized value in print at - line 4.
Alive!

P:\test>c:\perl561\bin\perl5.6.1.exe
use strict;
use warnings;
my $x="";
print substr($x,2,1); # crashes here
print "Alive!\n"; # not reached
^Z
substr outside of string at - line 4.
Use of uninitialized value in print at - line 4.
Alive!

P:\test>

Which indicates that the execution path is being truncated or short ciruited when the subcall is in place, but no crash, just a silent move to the END{} of the program--which isn't very freindly.

Seems to be a Win32 thing, and one probably worth reporting even though I cannot see how to provide any sort of indication of where the problem might occur?

[Anonymous Monk]

Seems to be a Win32 thing

As I said earlier, I get this same behaviour under HP/UX. Unix isn't windows, so it's not a "Win32" thing. :-)

even though I cannot see how to provide any sort of indication of where the problem might occur?

Well, you seem to be ignoring my conjectures about substr() being treated like an lvalue subroutine in this context.

Maybe I should be clearer about what I suspect is happening.

First of all, from perldoc -f substr: When used as an lvalue, specifying a substring that is entirely outside the string is a fatal error.

substr() is used an lvalue (left value) when it's on the *left* hand side of an equal sign. This isn't usual for function calls, but substr() is an exception.

For example, this code demonstrates a substr() used as an lvalue, where the substring lies entirely outside the string. It generates a fatal error, just like the documentation says it will.

use strict;
use warnings;
my $x="";
substr($x,2,1)="X"; # a fatal errror
print "Alive!\n"; # not reached
__END__
substr outside of string at - line 4.

Notice how this fatal error behaviour looks exactly the same as the fatal errors we saw earlier in the thread, back when we passed "substr($x,2,1)" to a function that does nothing. Hmm... suspicious!

Second of all, note that function calls can sometimes modify their callers:

use strict;
use warnings;
my $x="";
bar($x);
print "$x\n"; #prints 10
sub bar { $_[0]=10; } # does $x=10, essentially

So, let's combine these two ideas.

Now, suppose I were to pass substr($x,2,1) to bar() instead of $x. That would be roughly equivalent to running:

substr($x,2,1)=10

, which treats our substr() call as an lvalue. (It's on the *left* side of an assignment). This is a fatal error, like we saw in point #1 above.

My question to the experts was (and maybe I didn't spell this out clearly enough):
Is the fact that a function *may* need to treat substr() as an lvalue causing it to be *always* treated that way?

My guess is "yes" (it would explain the behaviour that we both see), and my follow-up question was whether this was a design decision, or a bug.

Now do you see what I was really asking?
--
Ytrew