further qualify references to "alphanumeric" (from Wolfgang Laun

<wolfgang.laun@alcatel.at>)

p4raw-id: //depot/perl@6186

6 files changed, 15 insertions, 10 deletions

diff --git a/pod/perlapi.pod b/pod/perlapi.pod
index cd467ba8ed..2532620d7c 100644
--- a/pod/perlapi.pod
+++ b/pod/perlapi.pod
@@ -670,7 +670,7 @@ Undefines the hash.
 =item isALNUM
 
 Returns a boolean indicating whether the C C<char> is an ASCII alphanumeric
-character or digit.
+character (including underscore) or digit.
 
 	bool	isALNUM(char ch)
 
diff --git a/pod/perldata.pod b/pod/perldata.pod
index ac444fa17c..a2bb840b01 100644
--- a/pod/perldata.pod
+++ b/pod/perldata.pod
@@ -303,7 +303,8 @@ price is $Z<>100."
     print "The price is $Price.\n";	# interpreted
 
 As in some shells, you can enclose the variable name in braces to
-disambiguate it from following alphanumerics.  You must also do
+disambiguate it from following alphanumerics (and underscores).
+You must also do
 this when interpolating a variable into a string to separate the
 variable name from a following double-colon or an apostrophe, since
 these would be otherwise treated as a package separator:
diff --git a/pod/perlfaq6.pod b/pod/perlfaq6.pod
index bf007ee26b..29136abd96 100644
--- a/pod/perlfaq6.pod
+++ b/pod/perlfaq6.pod
@@ -415,7 +415,8 @@ Use the split function:
 Note that this isn't really a word in the English sense; it's just
 chunks of consecutive non-whitespace characters.
 
-To work with only alphanumeric sequences, you might consider
+To work with only alphanumeric sequences (including underscores), you
+might consider
 
     while (<>) {
 	foreach $word (m/(\w+)/g) {
diff --git a/pod/perlfaq9.pod b/pod/perlfaq9.pod
index 16a803c997..d1bd593dfe 100644
--- a/pod/perlfaq9.pod
+++ b/pod/perlfaq9.pod
@@ -215,7 +215,8 @@ Here's an example of decoding:
     $string =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9]{2})/chr(hex($1))/ge;
 
 Encoding is a bit harder, because you can't just blindly change
-all the non-alphanumunder character (C<\W>) into their hex escapes.
+all characters that are not letters, digits or underscores (C<\W>)
+into their hex escapes.
 It's important that characters with special meaning like C</> and C<?>
 I<not> be translated.  Probably the easiest way to get this right is
 to avoid reinventing the wheel and just use the URI::Escape module,
diff --git a/pod/perllocale.pod b/pod/perllocale.pod
index 55ccf441fd..ddb5a6e710 100644
--- a/pod/perllocale.pod
+++ b/pod/perllocale.pod
@@ -449,7 +449,7 @@ if you "use locale".
 	a A b B c C d D e E
 	a b c d e A B C D E
 
-Here is a code snippet to tell what alphanumeric
+Here is a code snippet to tell what "word"
 characters are in the current locale, in that locale's order:
 
         use locale;
@@ -518,8 +518,9 @@ results, and so always obey the current C<LC_COLLATE> locale.
 In the scope of S<C<use locale>>, Perl obeys the C<LC_CTYPE> locale
 setting.  This controls the application's notion of which characters are
 alphabetic.  This affects Perl's C<\w> regular expression metanotation,
-which stands for alphanumeric characters--that is, alphabetic and
-numeric characters.  (Consult L<perlre> for more information about
+which stands for alphanumeric characters--that is, alphabetic,
+numeric, and including other special characters such as the underscore or
+hyphen.  (Consult L<perlre> for more information about
 regular expressions.)  Thanks to C<LC_CTYPE>, depending on your locale
 setting, characters like 'E<aelig>', 'E<eth>', 'E<szlig>', and
 'E<oslash>' may be understood as C<\w> characters.
diff --git a/pod/perlre.pod b/pod/perlre.pod
index a82ab32b73..15e58c1cf9 100644
--- a/pod/perlre.pod
+++ b/pod/perlre.pod
@@ -254,15 +254,15 @@ backspace are control characters.  All characters with ord() less than
 
 =item graph
 
-Any alphanumeric or punctuation character.
+Any alphanumeric or punctuation (special) character.
 
 =item print
 
-Any alphanumeric or punctuation character or space.
+Any alphanumeric or punctuation (special) character or space.
 
 =item punct
 
-Any punctuation character.
+Any punctuation (special) character.
 
 =item xdigit
 
@@ -381,6 +381,7 @@ use for a pattern. Simply quote all non-"word" characters:
 
     $pattern =~ s/(\W)/\\$1/g;
 
+(If C<use locale> is set, then this depends on the current locale.)
 Today it is more common to use the quotemeta() function or the C<\Q>
 metaquoting escape sequence to disable all metacharacters' special
 meanings like this: