boolean madness: false is the new true?

[Steve Vertigan]

I have the following method in a module I'm writing...

sub uses {
my $self = shift; my $var = shift;
if ($var) {
if ($self->{'DEFINED'}{$var}) { return true; }
else { return false; } #this line broken
} else {
my @def = keys %{$self->{'DEFINED'}};
return @def;
}
}

and using it in the context if ($obj->uses('badvar')) always tests as
true. However using return 0 instead of return false seems to
work fine. Either my perl interpreter is broken or my brain is, any
guesses?

 

[Tad McClellan]

else { return false; } #this line broken

You should always enable warnings when developing Perl code.

 

[Jürgen Exner]

I have the following method in a module I'm writing...

sub uses {
my $self = shift; my $var = shift;
if ($var) {
if ($self->{'DEFINED'}{$var}) { return true; }
else { return false; } #this line broken
} else {
my @def = keys %{$self->{'DEFINED'}};
return @def;
}
}

and using it in the context if ($obj->uses('badvar')) always tests as
true. However using return 0 instead of return false seems to
work fine. Either my perl interpreter is broken or my brain is, any
guesses?

When trying to run your code isn't the warning message from perl quite
obvious:

Bareword "true" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at t.pl line 6.
Bareword "false" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at t.pl line 8.
Execution of t.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

jue