Here is the documentation on it. ( http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlop.html#qw%2fSTRING%2f ) qw/STRING/ Evaluates to a list of the words extracted out of STRING, using embedded whitespace as the word delimiters. It can be understood as being roughly equivalent to: split(' ', q/STRING/); the difference being that it generates a real list at compile time. So this expression: qw(foo bar baz) is semantically equivalent to the list: 'foo', 'bar', 'baz' Some frequently seen examples: use POSIX qw( setlocale localeconv ) @EXPORT = qw( foo bar baz ); A common mistake is to try to separate the words with comma or to put comments into a multi-line qw-string. For this reason, the use warnings pragma and the -w switch (that is, the $^W variable) produces warnings if the STRING contains the "," or the "#" character. > -----Original Message----- > From: Nichole Bialczyk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 1:39 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: qw > > > i'm trying to work my way throuh an existing script and it says > > @array = qw("stuff", "more stuff", "even more stuff"); > > what does the qw do? > > thanks, nichole >
