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Diffstat (limited to 'pod/perldelta.pod')
-rw-r--r-- | pod/perldelta.pod | 22 |
1 files changed, 22 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/pod/perldelta.pod b/pod/perldelta.pod index d841d28b87..329b1d0a08 100644 --- a/pod/perldelta.pod +++ b/pod/perldelta.pod @@ -161,6 +161,28 @@ strings. See L<perlfunc/"pack">. The new format type modifer '_' is useful for packing and unpacking native shorts, ints, and longs. See L<perlfunc/"pack">. +=head2 $^X variables may now have names longer than one character + +Formerly, $^X was synonymous with ${"\cX"}, but $^XY was a syntax +error. Now variable names that begin with a control character may be +arbitrarily long. However, for compatibility reasons, these variables +I<must> be written with explicit braces, as C<${^XY}> for example. +C<${^XYZ}> is synonymous with ${"\cXYZ"}. Variable names with more +than one control character, such as C<${^XY^Z}>, are illegal. + +The old syntax has not changed. As before, the `^X' may either be a +literal control-X character or the two character sequence `caret' plus +`X'. When the braces are omitted, the variable name stops after the +control character. Thus C<"$^XYZ"> continues to be synonymous with +C<$^X . "YZ"> as before. + +As before, lexical variables may not have names beginning with control +characters. As before, variables whose names begin with a control +character are always forced to be in package `main'. These variables +are all reserved for future extensions, except the ones that begin +with C<^_>, which may be used by user programs and will not acquire a +special meaning in any future version of Perl. + =head1 Significant bug fixes =head2 E<lt>HANDLEE<gt> on empty files |