Perl does not have a special boolean type and yet, in the documentation of Perl you can often see that a function returns a "Boolean" value. Sometimes the documentation says the function returns true or returns false.

So what's the truth?

Perl does not have specific boolean type, but every scalar value - if checked using if will be either true or false. So you can write 

if ($x eq "foo") {
}

and you can also write 

if ($x) {
}

the former will check if the content of the $x variable is the same as the "foo" string while the latter will check if $x itself is true or not.

What values are true and false in Perl?

It is quite easy. Let me quote the documentation: 

The number 0, the strings '0' and '', the empty list "()", and "undef"
are all false in a boolean context. All other values are true.
Negation of a true value by "!" or "not" returns a special false
value. When evaluated as a string it is treated as '', but as a number, it is treated as 0.


From perlsyn under "Truth and Falsehood".

So the following scalar values are considered false:

  • undef - the undefined value
  • 0 the number 0, even if you write it as 000 or 0.0
  • '' the empty string.
  • '0' the string that contains a single 0 digit.

All other scalar values, including the following are true:

  • 1 any non-0 number
  • ' ' the string with a space in it
  • '00' two or more 0 characters in a string
  • "0\n" a 0 followed by a newline
  • 'true'
  • 'false' yes, even the string 'false' evaluates to true.

I think this is because Larry Wall, creator of Perl, has a general positive world-view. He probably thinks there are very few bad and false things in the world. Most of the things are true.