English--3perl

English(3perl)         Perl Programmers Reference Guide         English(3perl)



NAME
       English - use nice English (or awk) names for ugly punctuation vari-
       ables

SYNOPSIS
           use English qw( -no_match_vars ) ;  # Avoids regex performance penalty
           use English;
           ...
           if ($ERRNO =~ /denied/) { ... }

DESCRIPTION
       This module provides aliases for the built-in variables whose names no
       one seems to like to read.  Variables with side-effects which get trig-
       gered just by accessing them (like $0) will still be affected.

       For those variables that have an awk version, both long and short
       English alternatives are provided.  For example, the $/ variable can be
       referred to either $RS or $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR if you are using the
       English module.

       See perlvar for a complete list of these.

PERFORMANCE
       This module can provoke sizeable inefficiencies for regular expres-
       sions, due to unfortunate implementation details.  If performance mat-
       ters in your application and you don't need $PREMATCH, $MATCH, or
       $POSTMATCH, try doing

          use English qw( -no_match_vars ) ;

       .  It is especially important to do this in modules to avoid penalizing
       all applications which use them.



perl v5.8.8                       2001-09-22                    English(3perl)