This and other RFCs are available on the web at http://dev.perl.org/rfc/ =head1 TITLE STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR should be renamed =head1 VERSION Maintainer: Nathan Wiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 04 Aug 2000 Last-Modified: 14 Aug 2000 Version: 3 Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Number: 30 Status: Developing =head1 ABSTRACT Consensus has been reached that filehandles (currently barewords) will be renamed to use the leading $ type, to make them consistent with other Perl variables. STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR should follow suit and be renamed $STDIN, $STDOUT, and $STDERR. =head1 DESCRIPTION Currently, filehandles are barewords, such as FILE and PIPE. However, for Perl 6 these are planned to be renamed to true "single-whatzitz" types (thanks Tom) and prefixed with a $. So, the current: print FILE "$stuff\n"; Will become something like: print $fh "$stuff\n"; STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR need to follow suit. We should change print STDERR "$stuff\n"; to: print $STDERR "$stuff\n"; This makes them consistent with other Perl variables, such as @ARGV, %ENV, $VERSION, etc, all of which have the correct distiguishing prefix for their type. =head1 IMPLEMENTATION All references to STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR will have to be changed. In addition, $STDIN, $STDOUT, and $STDERR should be standard, read-write variables. If a person wants to do this: $STDERR = $mywarningsfile; warn "Watch out!"; They should be able to. =head1 REFERENCES RFC14: Modify open() to support FileObjects and Extensibility
