> Bryan Harris wrote: >> >> John W. Krahn wrote: >>> >>> Bryan Harris wrote: >>>> >>>> ... but by modifying $_ I was clobbering $_ elsewhere in the larger >>>> program! >>> Yes because $_ is a special global variable. This effect is called >>> "action at a distance" which is why it is better to use named lexically >>> scoped variables instead of $_. >> >> I have the Perl Bookshelf on CD (and perldoc, obviously) -- where can I read >> more about this? > > perldoc perlvar > > http://shoebox.net/articles/perl-warts.html > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_a_distance_(computer_science)
Great info, thanks. Curiously, perlvar seems to recommend localizing $_ with "local", but I thought I read somewhere to never use local and only use my. I still don't understand how those two are different. >>>> Oddly, perl won't let me do "my ($_) = shift;", so I'm stuck having to use >>>> another variable. >>> Perl 5.10 *will* let you do "my $_". >> >> Why is perl on OS X still at 5.8.8? It's free, right? why wouldn't Apple >> include the latest one? (I know this isn't an Apple list, just wondering if >> anyone knows.) > > Perl 5.10 is still at the .0 stage (5.10.0) and a lot of people like to > wait until software has progressed past the .0 phase. Makes sense. What happened to Perl 5.9? - Bryan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
