Re: Modern Perl: The Book: The Draft

[Jenda]

ch 1, Perldoc: I think the windozers might appreciate a note that ActivePerl (and probably other distributions) contains and keeps updated a HTML version of the docs they can browse, accessible from the Start menu. And possibly even that they can create a simple batch like this:

@rem  Save as pdoc.bat
@perldoc -o html -T -w index %* > %TEMP%\perldoc_temp.html && start %T
+EMP%\perldoc_temp.html

store it in a directory that's in PATH and then pdoc ... will render the documentation in HTML and open it in their favorite browser. I think they'll find that easier to read than if they stay restricted to the shell window.

ch 1, Implicit ideas, The Default Scalar Variable: "the three-argument form of print and say"??? print FILEHANDLE "text"; has just two arguments. In either case I would not talk about N-argument form of print/say, it's not the number of arguments that matters. print/say simply uses $_ only if passed no arguments. Fullstop.

ch 1, The Default Array Variables: s/Another default variable is available inside Perl subroutines; this is \@_\./Another default variable available inside Perl subroutines is @_./;

[chromatic]

Thanks for the suggestions. I've incorporated them; if I figure out an easy way to refer to pdoc without disrupting the flow of narrative, I'll include that too.