Make stacked -l work
Perl 5.10.0 introduced stacked filetest operators,
-x -r $foo
being equivalent to
-r $foo && -x _
That does not work with -l. It was these suspicious lines in
Perl_my_lstat_flags that drew my attention to it:
> else if (PL_laststype != OP_LSTAT
> && (PL_op->op_private & OPpFT_STACKED) && ckWARN(WARN_IO))
> Perl_croak(aTHX_ no_prev_lstat);
That croak only happens when warnings are on. Warnings are just
supposed to be warnings, unless the ‘user’ explicitly requests
fatal warnings.
$ perl -le 'print "foo", -l -e "miniperl"'
foo
$ perl -lwe 'print "foo", -l -e "miniperl"'
The stat preceding -l _ wasn't an lstat at -e line 1.
That it doesn’t die in the first example is a bug.
In fact, it’s using the return value of -e as a file name:
$ ln -s miniperl 1
$ ./miniperl -le 'print -l -e "miniperl"'
1
And, with warnings on, if the preceding stat *was* an lstat, it
falls back to the pre-stacked behaviour, just as it does when warn-
ings are off.
It’s meant to be equivalent to -e "miniperl" && -l _ (which is why the
error message above says ‘The stat preceding -l _’).