X-Git-Url: http://git.shadowcat.co.uk/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?a=blobdiff_plain;f=pod%2Fperlref.pod;h=7255162fcd863b503ecf706c23aeae7f44ccb42e;hb=f7e7bc433bd27536177abe998df51111ab543b7a;hp=2727e95ae91e78060a57daf5ee65203241a9937b;hpb=ee8c7f5465f003860e2347a2946abacac39bd9b9;p=p5sagit%2Fp5-mst-13.2.git diff --git a/pod/perlref.pod b/pod/perlref.pod index 2727e95..7255162 100644 --- a/pod/perlref.pod +++ b/pod/perlref.pod @@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ have been officially "blessed" into a class package.) Symbolic references are names of variables or other objects, just as a symbolic link in a Unix filesystem contains merely the name of a file. -The C<*glob> notation is something of a of symbolic reference. (Symbolic +The C<*glob> notation is something of a symbolic reference. (Symbolic references are sometimes called "soft references", but please don't call them that; references are confusing enough without useless synonyms.) @@ -243,7 +243,9 @@ All of these are self-explanatory except for C<*foo{IO}>. It returns the IO handle, used for file handles (L), sockets (L and L), and directory handles (L). For compatibility with previous -versions of Perl, C<*foo{FILEHANDLE}> is a synonym for C<*foo{IO}>. +versions of Perl, C<*foo{FILEHANDLE}> is a synonym for C<*foo{IO}>, though it +is deprecated as of 5.8.0. If deprecation warnings are in effect, it will warn +of its use. C<*foo{THING}> returns undef if that particular THING hasn't been used yet, except in the case of scalars. C<*foo{SCALAR}> returns a reference to an @@ -538,6 +540,13 @@ string is effectively quoted. B: This section describes an experimental feature. Details may change without notice in future versions. +B: The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes +(the weird use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from +Perl 5.8.0 and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be +implemented differently. Not only is the current interface rather ugly, +but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash use quite +noticeably. The 'fields' pragma interface will remain available. + Beginning with release 5.005 of Perl, you may use an array reference in some contexts that would normally require a hash reference. This allows you to access array elements using symbolic names, as if they