variables - How does --$| work in Perl?

Question

Recently I came across this way to filter out every second value of a list:

perl -E 'say grep --$|, 1..10'
13579

How does it work?

Answer 1

$| is a special Perl variable that can only have the values 0 and 1. Any assignment to $| of a true non-zero value, like

$| = 1;
$| = 'foo';
$| = "4asdf";          # 0 + "4asdf" is 4
$| = @a;

will have the effect of setting $| to 1. Any assignment of a false zero value

$| = 0;
$| = "";
$| = undef;
$| = "erk";            # 0 + "erk" is 0

will set $| to 0.

Expand --$| to $| = $| - 1, and now you can see what is going on. If $| was originally 1, then --$| will change the value to 0. If $| was originally 0, then --$| will try to set the value to -1 but will actually set the value to 1.