On 2024-03-30 11:25, Skip Montanaro via Python-list wrote:
> https://xkcd.com/1306/
> what does SIGIL mean?
I think its' a Perl term, referring to the $/@/# symbols in front of
identifiers.
I had a vague recollection of hearing it elsewhere (*Game of Thrones,* on
the armies' battle flags?), but didn't know what it meant. Google tells me:
*an inscribed or painted symbol considered to have magical power.*
So, they're more than just line noise. They confer power on their users...
Perhaps '@' in the context of decorators is the most prominent example in
Python, since decorators technically don't allow the programmer to do
something they couldn't before, but are now are used everywhere, a key
feature of many applications and modules.
Magical-ly, y'rs,
I wouldn't consider '@' to be a sigil any more than I would a unary minus.
In Perl there's the prefixes $ (scalar), @ (array) and %
(hash/dictionary), but also & (function), although it's rare because
there's also the () afterwards.
Variables in PHP have the prefix $ and only $.
In old versions of BASIC, string variables had the suffix $, and integer
variables the suffix %. Some versions also had the suffix # (for double
precision, I think).
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