remove index offsetting ($[)

$[ remains as a variable.  It no longer has compile-time magic.
At runtime, it always reads as zero, accepts a write of zero, but dies
on writing any other value.

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 16 deletions

diff --git a/pod/perlvar.pod b/pod/perlvar.pod
index 890909d526..3217e3cc55 100644
--- a/pod/perlvar.pod
+++ b/pod/perlvar.pod
@@ -2071,25 +2071,17 @@ Removed in Perl 5.10.
 =item $[
 X<$[> X<$ARRAY_BASE>
 
-This variable stores the index of the first element in an array, and
-of the first character in a substring. The default is 0, but you could
-theoretically set it to 1 to make Perl behave more like B<awk> (or Fortran)
-when subscripting and when evaluating the index() and substr() functions.
-
-As of release 5 of Perl, assignment to C<$[> is treated as a compiler
-directive, and cannot influence the behavior of any other file.
-(That's why you can only assign compile-time constants to it.)
-Its use is highly discouraged.
-
-Prior to Perl 5.10, assignment to C<$[> could be seen from outer lexical
-scopes in the same file, unlike other compile-time directives (such as
-L<strict>). Using local() on it would bind its value strictly to a lexical
-block. Now it is always lexically scoped.
-
-Mnemonic: [ begins subscripts.
+C<$[> was a variable that you could use to offset the indexing of arrays
+and strings.  After a deprecation cycle, the feature was removed in
+Perl 5.16.  Two old ways of coping with the variability of the index
+offset, which were rendered obsolete in Perl 5.000 when C<$[> became
+effectively lexically scoped, are still supported: you can read it
+(always yielding zero) and you can assign zero to it.
 
 Deprecated in Perl 5.12.
 
+Removed in Perl 5.16.
+
 =item $OLD_PERL_VERSION
 
 =item $]