Re^2: Better expression for $x = !!$y||0

[merlyn]

Like others in this thread, you too are presuming the sanity of the ! return. In fact, ! can return 37 for true. There's no promise in the Perl docs otherwise.

[ysth]

I said shorter, I didn't say accurate :). But really, if you presume an overloaded ! that returns something other than perl's true and false values (and that's presuming an awful lot) there's nothing you can do to $y besides examine it in boolean context with if or ?:.

[TimToady]

Just to let you know we fixed this, in Perl 6 this is written:

    $x = ?$y;

And the standard operators like == are expected to return 0 or 1 when a boolean result is expected. (Boolean context will still accept any true value, as in Perl 5, and the short-circuit operators still return one of the input values as the "true" value.),

Yes, you can still overload these to return something other than 0 or 1, but it would be construed as antisocial.

[ysth]

in Perl 6

...

Yes, you can still overload these to return something other than 0 or 1, but it would be construed as antisocial.

That's exactly how I feel WRT doing this in perl5.

[Anonymous Monk]

I said shorter, I didn't say accurate.

If it doesn't need to be accurate, $x=1 is pretty short.