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perldata: Define 'sigil', and use this term

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Also note that the may be blanks between a sigil and the name.  This
fixes #19096.
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Karl Williamson 2025-05-18 06:33:57 -06:00 committed by Karl Williamson
parent ebcd258cde
commit f93ae730ce
1 changed files with 13 additions and 10 deletions
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23
pod/perldata.pod
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@ -17,7 +17,8 @@ values indexed by their associated string key.
Values are usually referred to by name, or through a named reference.
The first character of the name tells you to what sort of data
structure it refers. The rest of the name tells you the particular
structure it refers. This character is called a "sigil". The rest of
the name tells you the particular
value to which it refers. Usually this name is a single I<identifier>,
that is, a string beginning with a letter or underscore, and
containing letters, underscores, and digits. In some cases, it may
@ -28,8 +29,9 @@ to locate the namespace in which to look up the final identifier
on identifiers, see L</Identifier parsing>. It's possible to
substitute for a simple identifier, an expression that produces a reference
to the value at runtime. This is described in more detail below
and in L<perlref>.
X<identifier>
and in L<perlref>. It is legal, but not recommended, to separate a
variable's sigil from its name by space and/or tab characters.
X<identifier> X<sigil>
Perl also has its own built-in variables whose names don't follow
these rules. They have strange names so they don't accidentally
@ -41,7 +43,7 @@ the inner working of Perl have names containing punctuation characters.
These are documented in L<perlvar>.
X<variable, built-in>
Scalar values are always named with '$', even when referring to a
Scalar values are always named with the sigil '$', even when referring to a
scalar that is part of an array or a hash. The '$' symbol works
semantically like the English word "the" in that it indicates a
single value is expected.
@ -52,8 +54,8 @@ X<scalar>
$days{'Feb'} # the 'Feb' value from hash %days
$#days # the last index of array @days
Entire arrays (and slices of arrays and hashes) are denoted by '@',
which works much as the word "these" or "those" does in English,
Entire arrays (and slices of arrays and hashes) are denoted by the sigil
'@', which works much as the word "these" or "those" does in English,
in that it indicates multiple values are expected.
X<array>
@ -61,12 +63,12 @@ X<array>
@days[3,4,5] # same as ($days[3],$days[4],$days[5])
@days{'a','c'} # same as ($days{'a'},$days{'c'})
Entire hashes are denoted by '%':
Entire hashes are denoted by the sigil '%':
X<hash>
%days # (key1, val1, key2, val2 ...)
In addition, subroutines are named with an initial '&', though this
In addition, subroutines are named with an initial sigil '&', though this
is optional when unambiguous, just as the word "do" is often redundant
in English. Symbol table entries can be named with an initial '*',
but you don't really care about that yet (if ever :-).
@ -81,8 +83,9 @@ is a part of @foo, not a part of $foo. This may seem a bit weird,
but that's okay, because it is weird.
X<namespace>
Because variable references always start with '$', '@', or '%', the
"reserved" words aren't in fact reserved with respect to variable
Because variable references always start with the sigils '$', '@', or
'%', the "reserved" words aren't in fact reserved with respect to
variable
names. They I<are> reserved with respect to labels and filehandles,
however, which don't have an initial special character. You can't
have a filehandle named "log", for instance. Hint: you could say