Promotion of undef variable to ARRAY ref in foreach

user_1151724 0
Viewed 51
use strict;                  
use warnings FATAL => 'all'; 

my $x = undef;               
if (@$x) { print "ok\n" }    
else { print "no\n" }

Predictably yields "Can't use an undefined value as an ARRAY reference" for if (@$x). But inserting a foreach (@$x):

use strict;                  
use warnings FATAL => 'all'; 

my $x = undef;               
foreach (@$x) { print $_ }  # <------- 
if (@$x) { print "ok\n" }    
else { print "no\n" }        

print ref($x)."\n";

Outputs:

no
ARRAY

The foreach line seems to have made an assignment to $x. What's up with this?

perl
1 Answers

Autovivification makes

@$x

equivalent to

@{ $x //= [] }

in lvalue context.

Use

if ($x) {
   for (@$x) {
      ...
   }
}
user_5899240
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