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=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


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