=item $^S
-Current state of the interpreter. Undefined if parsing of the current
-module/eval is not finished (may happen in $SIG{__DIE__} and
-$SIG{__WARN__} handlers). True if inside an eval(), otherwise false.
+Current state of the interpreter.
+
+ $^S State
+ --------- -------------------
+ undef Parsing module/eval
+ true (1) Executing an eval
+ false (0) Otherwise
+
+The first state may happen in $SIG{__DIE__} and $SIG{__WARN__} handlers.
=item $BASETIME
B<-T>), 0 for off, -1 when only taint warnings are enabled (i.e. with
B<-t> or B<-TU>). This variable is read-only.
-=item ${^UTF8_LOCALE}
+=item ${^UNICODE}
-Reflects whether the locale settings indicated the use of UTF-8 and that
-the use of UTF-8 was enabled either by the C<-C> command line switch or
-by setting the PERL_UTF8_LOCALE environment variable to a true value.
-This variable is read-only. If true, the STDIN is expected to be in
-UTF-8, the STDOUT and STDERR are in UTF-8, and C<:utf8> is the default
-file open layer. See L<perluniintro>, L<perlfunc/open>, and L<open>
-for more information.
+Reflects certain Unicode settings of Perl. See L<perlrun>
+documentation for the C<-C> switch for more information about
+the possible values. This variable is set during Perl startup
+and is thereafter read-only.
=item $PERL_VERSION
See L<POSIX>.
+The delivery policy of signals changed in Perl 5.8.0 from immediate
+(also known as "unsafe") to deferred, also known as "safe signals".
+See L<perlipc> for more information.
+
Certain internal hooks can be also set using the %SIG hash. The
routine indicated by C<$SIG{__WARN__}> is called when a warning message is
about to be printed. The warning message is passed as the first
ENV STDIN
INC STDOUT
ARGV STDERR
- ARGVOUT
+ ARGVOUT _
SIG
In particular, the new special C<${^_XYZ}> variables are always taken