function - What is wrong with print (2 & 2) >> 1?

Question

I am just wondering what happens with that piece of code. Why the result is incorrect only when printed directly, why is the newline ignored?

user@host_09:22 AM: perl
print 2 >> 1, "
";
print 2 & 2, "
";
print (2 & 2) >> 1, "
";
1
2
2user@host_09:22 AM: perl
$a = (2 & 2) >> 1;
print "$a
";
1

Answer 1

Perl interprets the parentheses as function arguments marker, as you can verify with

perl -MO=Deparse,-p -e 'print (2 & 2) >> 1'

Output:

(print(2) >> 1);

The canonical way is to precede the left parenthesis with a +:

print +(2 & 2) >> 1