When evaluating an expression in a scalar (boolean) context, Perl uses the explicit value 1 as a result if the expression evaluates to true and the empty string if the expression evaluates to false.
I'm curious why Perl uses the empty string to represent boolean false value and not 0 which seems more intuitive.
Note that I'm not concerned with Perl treating the empty string as a false in scalar (boolean) context.
EDIT
How would using string which is true ("false" for instance) as a string representation of false values change the meaning of existing code? Could we say that code that changes semantics after such a change is less robust/correct than it could have been? I guess string context is so pervasive in Perl that the only option leading to sane semantics is if boolean value preserve its value after round tripping to and from a string...