Author: larry
Date: Wed Nov 15 09:35:04 2006
New Revision: 13478
Modified:
doc/trunk/design/syn/S02.pod
Log:
Clarifications on use of identifiers, names, and bare sigils.
Modified: doc/trunk/design/syn/S02.pod
==============================================================================
--- doc/trunk/design/syn/S02.pod (original)
+++ doc/trunk/design/syn/S02.pod Wed Nov 15 09:35:04 2006
@@ -12,9 +12,9 @@
Maintainer: Larry Wall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 10 Aug 2004
- Last Modified: 4 Nov 2006
+ Last Modified: 15 Nov 2006
Number: 2
- Version: 77
+ Version: 78
This document summarizes Apocalypse 2, which covers small-scale
lexical items and typological issues. (These Synopses also contain
@@ -955,6 +955,35 @@
=item *
+And I<identifier> is composed of an alphabetic character followed by
+any sequence of alphanumeric characters. The definitions of alphabetic
+and numeric include appropriate Unicode characters. Underscore is
+always considered alphabetic.
+
+A I<name> is anything that is a legal part of a variable name (not counting
+the sigil). This includes
+
+ $foo # simple identifiers
+ $Foo::Bar::baz # compound identifiers separated by ::
+ $Foo::($bar)::baz # compound identifiers that perform interpolations
+ $42 # numeric names
+ $! # certain punctuational variables
+
+Unlike in Perl 5, if a sigil is followed by comma, semicolon, colon,
+or any kind of bracket or whitespace (including Unicode brackets and
+whitespace), it will be taken to be a sigil without a name rather
+than a punctuational variable. This allows you to use sigils as coercion
+operators:
+
+ print $( foo() )
+
+It also allows the use of bare sigils as placeholders for anonymous variables:
+
+ my ($a, $, $c) = 1..3;
+ print unless (state $)++;
+
+=item *
+
Ordinary package-qualified names look like in Perl 5:
$Foo::Bar::baz # the $baz variable in package Foo::Bar
