


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


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

SYNOPSIS
           use English;
           ...
           if ($ERRNO =~ /denied/) { ... }


DESCRIPTION
       You should not use this module in programs intended to be
       portable among Perl versions, programs that must perform
       regular expression matching operations efficiently, or
       libraries intended for use with such programs.  In a
       sense, this module is deprecated.  The reasons for this
       have to do with implementation details of the Perl
       interpreter which are too thorny to go into here.  Perhaps
       someday they will be fixed to make "use English" more
       practical.

       This module provides aliases for the built-in variables
       whose names no one seems to like to read.  Variables with
       side-effects which get triggered 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 the perlvar manpage for a complete list of these.
























29/Apr/1999            perl 5.005, patch 03                     1


