[perl #117535] Bogus "Ambiguous use of * resolved as operator *" warning

On Mon Apr 08 10:46:01 2013, nicholas wrote:
> I'm recording this bug mostly for completeness, not because I expect
> it to be
> fixed. The code in question is not really something that has any right
> to
> parse, let alone be useful.
> 
> $ perl -lwe '$* = \*STDERR; print $*foo'
> $* is no longer supported at -e line 1.
> Bareword found where operator expected at -e line 1, near "$*foo"
>         (Missing operator before foo?)
> Unquoted string "foo" may clash with future reserved word at -e line
> 1.
> Operator or semicolon missing before *foo at -e line 1.
> Ambiguous use of * resolved as operator * at -e line 1.
> foo
> 
> 
> and the exit code is 0.
> 
> Note that 3 of the 4 warnings from the parser are actually bogus, but
> the
> last is utterly incorrect, as there is no multiplication operator
> anywhere
> be seen.

I can trigger the same bug without playing games with print’s indirect
object:

$ ./perl -Ilib -e 'foo**foo'
Operator or semicolon missing before *foo at -e line 1.
Ambiguous use of * resolved as operator * at -e line 1.

This is basically the same as bug #76910.

When the lexer parses a bareword, it looks at the previous character and
warns if it happens to match /[*%&]/, so ** and && result in this error,
as does print $%foo.

The purpose of the code is to catch *bar *bar or &black &sheep.

It’s one of these heuristics that is wrong too often (I’ve triggered the
bogus warning with real code) and probably deserves extirpation, along
with the crazy @foo{qw# a b c #} warning (ticket #28380).  (Oops, sorry
for the tirade!)

There may be other ways to trigger this (ticket’s) warning that I
haven’t thought of.

-- 

Father Chrysostomos


---
via perlbug:  queue: perl5 status: new
https://rt.perl.org:443/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=117535

• [perl #117535] Bogus "Ambiguous use of * resolved as operator *" warning by Father Chrysostomos via RT
• [perl #117535] Bogus "Ambiguous use of * resolved as operator *" warning by Father Chrysostomos via RT