and containing letters, underscores, and digits. In some cases, it
may be a chain of identifiers, separated by C<::> (or by C<'>, but
that's deprecated); all but the last are interpreted as names of
-packages, in order to locate the namespace in which to look
+packages, to locate the namespace in which to look
up the final identifier (see L<perlmod/Packages> for details).
It's possible to substitute for a simple identifier an expression
which produces a reference to the value at runtime; this is
means that C<$foo[1]> is a part of @foo, not a part of $foo. This may
seem a bit weird, but that's okay, because it is weird.
-Since variable and array references always start with '$', '@', or '%',
+Because variable and array references always start with '$', '@', or '%',
the "reserved" words aren't in fact reserved with respect to variable
names. (They ARE reserved with respect to labels and filehandles,
however, which don't have an initial special character. You can't have
a filehandle named "log", for instance. Hint: you could say
C<open(LOG,'logfile')> rather than C<open(log,'logfile')>. Using uppercase
filehandles also improves readability and protects you from conflict
-with future reserved words.) Case I<IS> significant--"FOO", "Foo" and
+with future reserved words.) Case I<IS> significant--"FOO", "Foo", and
"foo" are all different names. Names that start with a letter or
underscore may also contain digits and underscores.
that returns a reference to an object of that type. For a description
of this, see L<perlref>.
-Names that start with a digit may only contain more digits. Names
+Names that start with a digit may contain only more digits. Names
which do not start with a letter, underscore, or digit are limited to
-one character, e.g. C<$%> or C<$$>. (Most of these one character names
+one character, e.g., C<$%> or C<$$>. (Most of these one character names
have a predefined significance to Perl. For instance, C<$$> is the
current process id.)
numbers, strings, and references. In general, conversion from one form to
another is transparent. (A scalar may not contain multiple values, but
may contain a reference to an array or hash containing multiple values.)
-Because of the automatic conversion of scalars, operations and functions
+Because of the automatic conversion of scalars, operations, and functions
that return scalars don't need to care (and, in fact, can't care) whether
the context is looking for a string or a number.
The length of an array is a scalar value. You may find the length of
array @days by evaluating C<$#days>, as in B<csh>. (Actually, it's not
-the length of the array, it's the subscript of the last element, since
+the length of the array, it's the subscript of the last element, because
there is (ordinarily) a 0th element.) Assigning to C<$#days> changes the
length of the array. Shortening an array by this method destroys
intervening values. Lengthening an array that was previously shortened
Version 5 of Perl changed the semantics of C<$[>: files that don't set
the value of C<$[> no longer need to worry about whether another
file changed its value. (In other words, use of C<$[> is deprecated.)
-So in general you can just assume that
+So in general you can assume that
scalar(@whatever) == $#whatever + 1;
true if and only if the hash contains any key/value pairs. (If there
are any key/value pairs, the value returned is a string consisting of
the number of used buckets and the number of allocated buckets, separated
-by a slash. This is pretty much only useful to find out whether Perl's
+by a slash. This is pretty much useful only to find out whether Perl's
(compiled in) hashing algorithm is performing poorly on your data set.
For example, you stick 10,000 things in a hash, but evaluating %HASH in
scalar context reveals "1/16", which means only one out of sixteen buckets
0377 # octal
4_294_967_296 # underline for legibility
-String literals are usually delimited by either single or double quotes. They
-work much like shell quotes: double-quoted string literals are subject
-to backslash and variable substitution; single-quoted strings are not
-(except for "C<\'>" and "C<\\>"). The usual Unix backslash rules apply for making
-characters such as newline, tab, etc., as well as some more exotic
-forms. See L<perlop/qq> for a list.
+String literals are usually delimited by either single or double
+quotes. They work much like shell quotes: double-quoted string
+literals are subject to backslash and variable substitution;
+single-quoted strings are not (except for "C<\'>" and "C<\\>").
+The usual Unix backslash rules apply for making characters such as
+newline, tab, etc., as well as some more exotic forms. See
+L<perlop/Quote and Quotelike Operators> for a list.
-You can also embed newlines directly in your strings, i.e. they can end
+You can also embed newlines directly in your strings, i.e., they can end
on a different line than they begin. This is nice, but if you forget
your trailing quote, the error will not be reported until Perl finds
another line containing the quote character, which may be much further
Note that a
single-quoted string must be separated from a preceding word by a
-space, since single quote is a valid (though deprecated) character in
+space, because single quote is a valid (though deprecated) character in
a variable name (see L<perlmod/Packages>).
Two special literals are __LINE__ and __FILE__, which represent the
current line number and filename at that point in your program. They
-may only be used as separate tokens; they will not be interpolated into
+may be used only as separate tokens; they will not be interpolated into
strings. In addition, the token __END__ may be used to indicate the
logical end of the script before the actual end of file. Any following
text is ignored, but may be read via the DATA filehandle. (The DATA
-filehandle may read data only from the main script, but not from any
+filehandle may read data from only the main script, but not from any
required file or evaluated string.) The two control characters ^D and
^Z are synonyms for __END__ (or __DATA__ in a module; see L<SelfLoader> for
details on __DATA__).
plain paranoid, you can force the correct interpretation with curly
brackets as above.
-A line-oriented form of quoting is based on the shell "here-doc" syntax.
-Following a C<E<lt>E<lt>> you specify a string to terminate the quoted material,
-and all lines following the current line down to the terminating string
-are the value of the item. The terminating string may be either an
-identifier (a word), or some quoted text. If quoted, the type of
-quotes you use determines the treatment of the text, just as in regular
-quoting. An unquoted identifier works like double quotes. There must
-be no space between the C<E<lt>E<lt>> and the identifier. (If you put a space it
-will be treated as a null identifier, which is valid, and matches the
-first blank line.) The terminating string must appear by itself
-(unquoted and with no surrounding whitespace) on the terminating line.
+A line-oriented form of quoting is based on the shell "here-doc"
+syntax. Following a C<E<lt>E<lt>> you specify a string to terminate
+the quoted material, and all lines following the current line down to
+the terminating string are the value of the item. The terminating
+string may be either an identifier (a word), or some quoted text. If
+quoted, the type of quotes you use determines the treatment of the
+text, just as in regular quoting. An unquoted identifier works like
+double quotes. There must be no space between the C<E<lt>E<lt>> and
+the identifier. (If you put a space it will be treated as a null
+identifier, which is valid, and matches the first blank line.) The
+terminating string must appear by itself (unquoted and with no
+surrounding whitespace) on the terminating line.
print <<EOF;
The price is $Price.
$time = (stat($file))[8];
# SYNTAX ERROR HERE.
- $time = stat($file)[8]; # OOPS, FORGOT PARENS
+ $time = stat($file)[8]; # OOPS, FORGOT PARENTHESES
# Find a hex digit.
$hexdigit = ('a','b','c','d','e','f')[$digit-10];
$x = (($foo,$bar) = f()); # set $x to f()'s return count
This is very handy when you want to do a list assignment in a Boolean
-context, since most list functions return a null list when finished,
+context, because most list functions return a null list when finished,
which when assigned produces a 0, which is interpreted as FALSE.
The final element may be an array or a hash:
mean that it comes out in that order. See L<perlfunc/sort> for examples
of how to arrange for an output ordering.
-=head2 Typeglobs and FileHandles
+=head2 Typeglobs and Filehandles
Perl uses an internal type called a I<typeglob> to hold an entire
symbol table entry. The type prefix of a typeglob is a C<*>, because
it represents all types. This used to be the preferred way to
pass arrays and hashes by reference into a function, but now that
-we have real references, this is seldom needed.
+we have real references, this is seldom needed. It also used to be the
+preferred way to pass filehandles into a function, but now
+that we have the *foo{THING} notation it isn't often needed for that,
+either. It is still needed to pass new filehandles into functions
+(*HANDLE{IO} only works if HANDLE has already been used).
-One place where you still use typeglobs (or references thereto)
-is for passing or storing filehandles. If you want to save away
-a filehandle, do it this way:
+If you need to use a typeglob to save away a filehandle, do it this way:
$fh = *STDOUT;
$fh = \*STDOUT;
-This is also the way to create a local filehandle. For example:
+This is also a way to create a local filehandle. For example:
sub newopen {
my $path = shift;
}
$fh = newopen('/etc/passwd');
-See L<perlref>, L<perlsub>, and L<perlmod/"Symbols Tables"> for more
-discussion on typeglobs. See L<perlfunc/open> for other ways of
-generating filehandles.
+Another way to create local filehandles is with IO::Handle and its ilk,
+see the bottom of L<perlfunc/open()>.
+
+See L<perlref>, L<perlsub>, and L<perlmod/"Symbol Tables"> for more
+discussion on typeglobs.