Re^2: Do not understand code

[Your Mother]

the then-present value of a variable, $_, which the Perl language does not even name.

I was curious if this was true, so checked English. Interestingly, to me at least, it does have a name but I admit its name is barely any better than not having one at all and probably why I didn't already know the answer without needing to look–

perl -MEnglish -le '$_ = "moo"; print $ARG'
moo

[eyepopslikeamosquito]

I'm worried that this talk of translating $_ into English is neglecting the all-important needs of the Perl poet, specifically the crucial Perl haiku (5-7-5) syllable count, where traditionally $_ is pronounced as "it" and @_ as "them", as in chipmunk's winning TPC 4 poem (where his subroutine summer is both a "sum-er" and a season):

sub summer { my $sum;
$sum += $_ for @_;
$sum } print summer (split);

and is pronounced (5-7-5) like so:

sub sum-mer my sum
sum plus equ-als "it" for "them"
sum print sum-mer split

[jdporter]

the crucial Perl haiku (5-7-5) syllable count

Far from crucial, the 5-7-5 syllable count is unnecessary. The idea that it's central to the definition of haiku is bogus. Pure myth.

[Eily]

Actually I would expect $ARGV for $_ to mostly be a side effect of @ARGV for @_. This also works for other punctuation variables and their english versions

perl -MEnglish -E "@; = q<Hi>; say @SUBSEP"
Hi

It's not a name that perl parses, but I'd expect pretty much everyone here to understand what "the default variable" refers too.

[LanX]

> to understand what "the default variable" refers too.

We could consider adding $DEF or $DEFAULT for $_ to Perl.

> @; = q<Hi>; say @SUBSEP

I suppose these are just glob aliases, that's why they work for all types associated to a symbol.

[Eily]

I suppose these are just glob aliases, that's why they work for all types associated to a symbol.

Yup, as confirmed by reading the code for English. @- and $- have different names though, so only the ARRAY and SCALAR portion of the glob are used in those cases.

I was about to say that if you want to have a longer name instead of $_ you can just use a lexical instead (I was thinking of for loops), but I forgot about grep and map where you have to use $_. $CURRENT would work in those cases.

[LanX]

It takes too much energy correcting all inaccuracies in sundial posts in replies. *

If it was possible to edit foreign posts (like in SO), sundials would be normally full of strikes and red comments.

*) that's the DOS feature which makes him similar to trolls.