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PERLSYN(1)                            Perl Programmers Reference Guide                            PERLSYN(1)



NAME
       perlsyn - Perl syntax

DESCRIPTION
       A Perl program consists of a sequence of declarations and statements which run from the top to the
       bottom.  Loops, subroutines and other control structures allow you to jump around within the code.

       Perl is a free-form language, you can format and indent it however you like.  Whitespace mostly
       serves to separate tokens, unlike languages like Python where it is an important part of the syntax.

       Many of Perl's syntactic elements are optional.  Rather than requiring you to put parentheses around
       every function call and declare every variable, you can often leave such explicit elements off and
       Perl will figure out what you meant.  This is known as Do What I Mean, abbreviated DWIM.  It allows
       programmers to be lazy and to code in a style with which they are comfortable.

       Perl borrows syntax and concepts from many languages: awk, sed, C, Bourne Shell, Smalltalk, Lisp and
       even English.  Other languages have borrowed syntax from Perl, particularly its regular expression
       extensions.  So if you have programmed in another language you will see familiar pieces in Perl.
       They often work the same, but see perltrap for information about how they differ.

   Declarations
       The only things you need to declare in Perl are report formats and subroutines (and sometimes not
       even subroutines).  A variable holds the undefined value ("undef") until it has been assigned a
       defined value, which is anything other than "undef".  When used as a number, "undef" is treated as 0;
       when used as a string, it is treated as the empty string, ""; and when used as a reference that isn't
       being assigned to, it is treated as an error.  If you enable warnings, you'll be notified of an
       uninitialized value whenever you treat "undef" as a string or a number.  Well, usually.  Boolean
       contexts, such as:

           my $a;
           if ($a) {}

       are exempt from warnings (because they care about truth rather than definedness).  Operators such as
       "++", "--", "+=", "-=", and ".=", that operate on undefined left values such as:

           my $a;
           $a++;

       are also always exempt from such warnings.

       A declaration can be put anywhere a statement can, but has no effect on the execution of the primary
       sequence of statements--declarations all take effect at compile time.  Typically all the declarations
       are put at the beginning or the end of the script.  However, if you're using lexically-scoped private
       variables created with "my()", you'll have to make sure your format or subroutine definition is
       within the same block scope as the my if you expect to be able to access those private variables.

       Declaring a subroutine allows a subroutine name to be used as if it were a list operator from that
       point forward in the program.  You can declare a subroutine without defining it by saying "sub name",
       thus:

           sub myname;
           $me = myname $0             or die "can't get myname";

       Note that myname() functions as a list operator, not as a unary operator; so be careful to use "or"
       instead of "||" in this case.  However, if you were to declare the subroutine as "sub myname ($)",
       then "myname" would function as a unary operator, so either "or" or "||" would work.

       Subroutines declarations can also be loaded up with the "require" statement or both loaded and
       imported into your namespace with a "use" statement.  See perlmod for details on this.

       A statement sequence may contain declarations of lexically-scoped variables, but apart from declaring
       a variable name, the declaration acts like an ordinary statement, and is elaborated within the
       sequence of statements as if it were an ordinary statement.  That means it actually has both compile-time compiletime
       time and run-time effects.

   Comments
       Text from a "#" character until the end of the line is a comment, and is ignored.  Exceptions include
       "#" inside a string or regular expression.

   Simple Statements
       The only kind of simple statement is an expression evaluated for its side effects.  Every simple
       statement must be terminated with a semicolon, unless it is the final statement in a block, in which
       case the semicolon is optional.  (A semicolon is still encouraged if the block takes up more than one
       line, because you may eventually add another line.)  Note that there are some operators like "eval
       {}" and "do {}" that look like compound statements, but aren't (they're just TERMs in an expression),
       and thus need an explicit termination if used as the last item in a statement.

   Truth and Falsehood
       The number 0, the strings '0' and '', the empty list "()", and "undef" are all false in a boolean
       context. All other values are true.  Negation of a true value by "!" or "not" returns a special false
       value.  When evaluated as a string it is treated as '', but as a number, it is treated as 0.

   Statement Modifiers
       Any simple statement may optionally be followed by a SINGLE modifier, just before the terminating
       semicolon (or block ending).  The possible modifiers are:

           if EXPR
           unless EXPR
           while EXPR
           until EXPR
           when EXPR
           for LIST
           foreach LIST

       The "EXPR" following the modifier is referred to as the "condition".  Its truth or falsehood
       determines how the modifier will behave.

       "if" executes the statement once if and only if the condition is true.  "unless" is the opposite, it
       executes the statement unless the condition is true (i.e., if the condition is false).

           print "Basset hounds got long ears" if length $ear >= 10;
           go_outside() and play() unless $is_raining;

       "when" executes the statement when $_ smart matches "EXPR", and then either "break"s out if it's
       enclosed in a "given" scope or skips to the "next" element when it lies directly inside a "for" loop.
       See also "Switch statements".

           given ($something) {
               $abc    = 1 when /^abc/;
               $just_a = 1 when /^a/;
               $other  = 1;
           }

           for (@names) {
               admin($_)   when [ qw/Alice Bob/ ];
               regular($_) when [ qw/Chris David Ellen/ ];
           }

       The "foreach" modifier is an iterator: it executes the statement once for each item in the LIST (with
       $_ aliased to each item in turn).

           print "Hello $_!\n" foreach qw(world Dolly nurse);

       "while" repeats the statement while the condition is true.  "until" does the opposite, it repeats the
       statement until the condition is true (or while the condition is false):

           # Both of these count from 0 to 10.
           print $i++ while $i <= 10;
           print $j++ until $j >  10;

       The "while" and "until" modifiers have the usual ""while" loop" semantics (conditional evaluated
       first), except when applied to a "do"-BLOCK (or to the deprecated "do"-SUBROUTINE statement), in
       which case the block executes once before the conditional is evaluated.  This is so that you can
       write loops like:

           do {
               $line = <STDIN>;
               ...
           } until $line  eq ".\n";

       See "do" in perlfunc.  Note also that the loop control statements described later will NOT work in
       this construct, because modifiers don't take loop labels.  Sorry.  You can always put another block
       inside of it (for "next") or around it (for "last") to do that sort of thing.  For "next", just
       double the braces:

           do {{
               next if $x == $y;
               # do something here
           }} until $x++ > $z;

       For "last", you have to be more elaborate:

           LOOP: {
                   do {
                       last if $x = $y**2;
                       # do something here
                   } while $x++ <= $z;
           }

       NOTE: The behaviour of a "my" statement modified with a statement modifier conditional or loop
       construct (e.g. "my $x if ...") is undefined.  The value of the "my" variable may be "undef", any
       previously assigned value, or possibly anything else.  Don't rely on it.  Future versions of perl
       might do something different from the version of perl you try it out on.  Here be dragons.

   Compound Statements
       In Perl, a sequence of statements that defines a scope is called a block.  Sometimes a block is
       delimited by the file containing it (in the case of a required file, or the program as a whole), and
       sometimes a block is delimited by the extent of a string (in the case of an eval).

       But generally, a block is delimited by curly brackets, also known as braces.  We will call this
       syntactic construct a BLOCK.

       The following compound statements may be used to control flow:

           if (EXPR) BLOCK
           if (EXPR) BLOCK else BLOCK
           if (EXPR) BLOCK elsif (EXPR) BLOCK ... else BLOCK
           unless (EXPR) BLOCK
           unless (EXPR) BLOCK else BLOCK
           unless (EXPR) BLOCK elsif (EXPR) BLOCK ... else BLOCK
           LABEL while (EXPR) BLOCK
           LABEL while (EXPR) BLOCK continue BLOCK
           LABEL until (EXPR) BLOCK
           LABEL until (EXPR) BLOCK continue BLOCK
           LABEL for (EXPR; EXPR; EXPR) BLOCK
           LABEL foreach VAR (LIST) BLOCK
           LABEL foreach VAR (LIST) BLOCK continue BLOCK
           LABEL BLOCK continue BLOCK

       Note that, unlike C and Pascal, these are defined in terms of BLOCKs, not statements.  This means
       that the curly brackets are required--no dangling statements allowed.  If you want to write
       conditionals without curly brackets there are several other ways to do it.  The following all do the
       same thing:

           if (!open(FOO)) { die "Can't open $FOO: $!"; }
           die "Can't open $FOO: $!" unless open(FOO);
           open(FOO) or die "Can't open $FOO: $!";     # FOO or bust!
           open(FOO) ? 'hi mom' : die "Can't open $FOO: $!";
                               # a bit exotic, that last one

       The "if" statement is straightforward.  Because BLOCKs are always bounded by curly brackets, there is
       never any ambiguity about which "if" an "else" goes with.  If you use "unless" in place of "if", the
       sense of the test is reversed. Like "if", "unless" can be followed by "else". "unless" can even be
       followed by one or more "elsif" statements, though you may want to think twice before using that
       particular language construct, as everyone reading your code will have to think at least twice before
       they can understand what's going on.

       The "while" statement executes the block as long as the expression is true.  The "until" statement
       executes the block as long as the expression is false.  The LABEL is optional, and if present,
       consists of an identifier followed by a colon.  The LABEL identifies the loop for the loop control
       statements "next", "last", and "redo".  If the LABEL is omitted, the loop control statement refers to
       the innermost enclosing loop.  This may include dynamically looking back your call-stack at run time
       to find the LABEL.  Such desperate behavior triggers a warning if you use the "use warnings" pragma
       or the -w flag.

       If there is a "continue" BLOCK, it is always executed just before the conditional is about to be
       evaluated again.  Thus it can be used to increment a loop variable, even when the loop has been
       continued via the "next" statement.

       Extension modules can also hook into the Perl parser to define new kinds of compound statement.
       These are introduced by a keyword which the extension recognises, and the syntax following the
       keyword is defined entirely by the extension.  If you are an implementor, see "PL_keyword_plugin" in
       perlapi for the mechanism.  If you are using such a module, see the module's documentation for
       details of the syntax that it defines.

   Loop Control
       The "next" command starts the next iteration of the loop:

           LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
               next LINE if /^#/;      # discard comments
               ...
           }

       The "last" command immediately exits the loop in question.  The "continue" block, if any, is not
       executed:

           LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
               last LINE if /^$/;      # exit when done with header
               ...
           }

       The "redo" command restarts the loop block without evaluating the conditional again.  The "continue"
       block, if any, is not executed.  This command is normally used by programs that want to lie to
       themselves about what was just input.

       For example, when processing a file like /etc/termcap.  If your input lines might end in backslashes
       to indicate continuation, you want to skip ahead and get the next record.

           while (<>) {
               chomp;
               if (s/\\$//) {
                   $_ .= <>;
                   redo unless eof();
               }
               # now process $_
           }

       which is Perl short-hand for the more explicitly written version:

           LINE: while (defined($line = <ARGV>)) {
               chomp($line);
               if ($line =~ s/\\$//) {
                   $line .= <ARGV>;
                   redo LINE unless eof(); # not eof(ARGV)!
               }
               # now process $line
           }

       Note that if there were a "continue" block on the above code, it would get executed only on lines
       discarded by the regex (since redo skips the continue block). A continue block is often used to reset
       line counters or "?pat?" one-time matches:

           # inspired by :1,$g/fred/s//WILMA/
           while (<>) {
               ?(fred)?    && s//WILMA $1 WILMA/;
               ?(barney)?  && s//BETTY $1 BETTY/;
               ?(homer)?   && s//MARGE $1 MARGE/;
           } continue {
               print "$ARGV $.: $_";
               close ARGV  if eof();           # reset $.
               reset       if eof();           # reset ?pat?
           }

       If the word "while" is replaced by the word "until", the sense of the test is reversed, but the
       conditional is still tested before the first iteration.

       The loop control statements don't work in an "if" or "unless", since they aren't loops.  You can
       double the braces to make them such, though.

           if (/pattern/) {{
               last if /fred/;
               next if /barney/; # same effect as "last", but doesn't document as well
               # do something here
           }}

       This is caused by the fact that a block by itself acts as a loop that executes once, see "Basic
       BLOCKs".

       The form "while/if BLOCK BLOCK", available in Perl 4, is no longer available.   Replace any
       occurrence of "if BLOCK" by "if (do BLOCK)".

   For Loops
       Perl's C-style "for" loop works like the corresponding "while" loop; that means that this:

           for ($i = 1; $i < 10; $i++) {
               ...
           }

       is the same as this:

           $i = 1;
           while ($i < 10) {
               ...
           } continue {
               $i++;
           }

       There is one minor difference: if variables are declared with "my" in the initialization section of
       the "for", the lexical scope of those variables is exactly the "for" loop (the body of the loop and
       the control sections).

       Besides the normal array index looping, "for" can lend itself to many other interesting applications.
       Here's one that avoids the problem you get into if you explicitly test for end-of-file on an
       interactive file descriptor causing your program to appear to hang.

           $on_a_tty = -t STDIN && -t STDOUT;
           sub prompt { print "yes? " if $on_a_tty }
           for ( prompt(); <STDIN>; prompt() ) {
               # do something
           }

       Using "readline" (or the operator form, "<EXPR>") as the conditional of a "for" loop is shorthand for
       the following.  This behaviour is the same as a "while" loop conditional.

           for ( prompt(); defined( $_ = <STDIN> ); prompt() ) {
               # do something
           }

   Foreach Loops
       The "foreach" loop iterates over a normal list value and sets the variable VAR to be each element of
       the list in turn.  If the variable is preceded with the keyword "my", then it is lexically scoped,
       and is therefore visible only within the loop.  Otherwise, the variable is implicitly local to the
       loop and regains its former value upon exiting the loop.  If the variable was previously declared
       with "my", it uses that variable instead of the global one, but it's still localized to the loop.
       This implicit localisation occurs only in a "foreach" loop.

       The "foreach" keyword is actually a synonym for the "for" keyword, so you can use "foreach" for
       readability or "for" for brevity.  (Or because the Bourne shell is more familiar to you than csh, so
       writing "for" comes more naturally.)  If VAR is omitted, $_ is set to each value.

       If any element of LIST is an lvalue, you can modify it by modifying VAR inside the loop.  Conversely,
       if any element of LIST is NOT an lvalue, any attempt to modify that element will fail.  In other
       words, the "foreach" loop index variable is an implicit alias for each item in the list that you're
       looping over.

       If any part of LIST is an array, "foreach" will get very confused if you add or remove elements
       within the loop body, for example with "splice".   So don't do that.

       "foreach" probably won't do what you expect if VAR is a tied or other special variable.   Don't do
       that either.

       Examples:

           for (@ary) { s/foo/bar/ }

           for my $elem (@elements) {
               $elem *= 2;
           }

           for $count (10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,'BOOM') {
               print $count, "\n"; sleep(1);
           }

           for (1..15) { print "Merry Christmas\n"; }

           foreach $item (split(/:[\\\n:]*/, $ENV{TERMCAP})) {
               print "Item: $item\n";
           }

       Here's how a C programmer might code up a particular algorithm in Perl:

           for (my $i = 0; $i < @ary1; $i++) {
               for (my $j = 0; $j < @ary2; $j++) {
                   if ($ary1[$i] > $ary2[$j]) {
                       last; # can't go to outer :-(
                   }
                   $ary1[$i] += $ary2[$j];
               }
               # this is where that last takes me
           }

       Whereas here's how a Perl programmer more comfortable with the idiom might do it:

           OUTER: for my $wid (@ary1) {
           INNER:   for my $jet (@ary2) {
                       next OUTER if $wid > $jet;
                       $wid += $jet;
                    }
                 }

       See how much easier this is?  It's cleaner, safer, and faster.  It's cleaner because it's less noisy.
       It's safer because if code gets added between the inner and outer loops later on, the new code won't
       be accidentally executed.  The "next" explicitly iterates the other loop rather than merely
       terminating the inner one.  And it's faster because Perl executes a "foreach" statement more rapidly
       than it would the equivalent "for" loop.

   Basic BLOCKs
       A BLOCK by itself (labeled or not) is semantically equivalent to a loop that executes once.  Thus you
       can use any of the loop control statements in it to leave or restart the block.  (Note that this is
       NOT true in "eval{}", "sub{}", or contrary to popular belief "do{}" blocks, which do NOT count as
       loops.)  The "continue" block is optional.

       The BLOCK construct can be used to emulate case structures.

           SWITCH: {
               if (/^abc/) { $abc = 1; last SWITCH; }
               if (/^def/) { $def = 1; last SWITCH; }
               if (/^xyz/) { $xyz = 1; last SWITCH; }
               $nothing = 1;
           }

       Such constructs are quite frequently used, because older versions of Perl had no official "switch"
       statement.

   Switch statements
       Starting from Perl 5.10, you can say

           use feature "switch";

       which enables a switch feature that is closely based on the Perl 6 proposal.

       The keywords "given" and "when" are analogous to "switch" and "case" in other languages, so the code
       above could be written as

           given($_) {
               when (/^abc/) { $abc = 1; }
               when (/^def/) { $def = 1; }
               when (/^xyz/) { $xyz = 1; }
               default { $nothing = 1; }
           }

       This construct is very flexible and powerful. For example:

           use feature ":5.10";
           given($foo) {
               when (undef) {
                   say '$foo is undefined';
               }
               when ("foo") {
                   say '$foo is the string "foo"';
               }
               when ([1,3,5,7,9]) {
                   say '$foo is an odd digit';
                   continue; # Fall through
               }
               when ($_ < 100) {
                   say '$foo is numerically less than 100';
               }
               when (\&complicated_check) {
                   say 'a complicated check for $foo is true';
               }
               default {
                   die q(I don't know what to do with $foo);
               }
           }

       "given(EXPR)" will assign the value of EXPR to $_ within the lexical scope of the block, so it's
       similar to

               do { my $_ = EXPR; ... }

       except that the block is automatically broken out of by a successful "when" or an explicit "break".

       Most of the power comes from implicit smart matching:

               when($foo)

       is exactly equivalent to

               when($_ ~~ $foo)

       Most of the time, "when(EXPR)" is treated as an implicit smart match of $_, i.e. "$_ ~~ EXPR". (See
       "Smart matching in detail" for more information on smart matching.) But when EXPR is one of the below
       exceptional cases, it is used directly as a boolean:

       •   a subroutine or method call

       •   a regular expression match, i.e. "/REGEX/" or "$foo =~ /REGEX/", or a negated regular expression
           match ("!/REGEX/" or "$foo !~ /REGEX/").

       •   a comparison such as "$_ < 10" or "$x eq "abc"" (or of course "$_ ~~ $c")

       •   "defined(...)", "exists(...)", or "eof(...)"

       •   a negated expression "!(...)" or "not (...)", or a logical exclusive-or "(...) xor (...)".

       •   a filetest operator, with the exception of "-s", "-M", "-A", and "-C", that return numerical
           values, not boolean ones.

       •   the ".." and "..." flip-flop operators.

       In those cases the value of EXPR is used directly as a boolean.

       Furthermore:

       •   If EXPR is "... && ..." or "... and ...", the test is applied recursively to both arguments. If
           both arguments pass the test, then the argument is treated as boolean.

       •   If EXPR is "... || ...", "... // ..." or "... or ...", the test is applied recursively to the
           first argument.

       These rules look complicated, but usually they will do what you want. For example you could write:

           when (/^\d+$/ && $_ < 75) { ... }

       Another useful shortcut is that, if you use a literal array or hash as the argument to "given", it is
       turned into a reference. So "given(@foo)" is the same as "given(\@foo)", for example.

       "default" behaves exactly like "when(1 == 1)", which is to say that it always matches.

       Breaking out

       You can use the "break" keyword to break out of the enclosing "given" block.  Every "when" block is
       implicitly ended with a "break".

       Fall-through

       You can use the "continue" keyword to fall through from one case to the next:

           given($foo) {
               when (/x/) { say '$foo contains an x'; continue }
               when (/y/) { say '$foo contains a y' }
               default    { say '$foo does not contain a y' }
           }

       Switching in a loop

       Instead of using "given()", you can use a "foreach()" loop.  For example, here's one way to count how
       many times a particular string occurs in an array:

           my $count = 0;
           for (@array) {
               when ("foo") { ++$count }
           }
           print "\@array contains $count copies of 'foo'\n";

       At the end of all "when" blocks, there is an implicit "next".  You can override that with an explicit
       "last" if you're only interested in the first match.

       This doesn't work if you explicitly specify a loop variable, as in "for $item (@array)". You have to
       use the default variable $_. (You can use "for my $_ (@array)".)

       Smart matching in detail

       The behaviour of a smart match depends on what type of thing its arguments are. The behaviour is
       determined by the following table: the first row that applies determines the match behaviour (which
       is thus mostly determined by the type of the right operand). Note that the smart match implicitly
       dereferences any non-blessed hash or array ref, so the "Hash" and "Array" entries apply in those
       cases. (For blessed references, the "Object" entries apply.)

       Note that the "Matching Code" column is not always an exact rendition.  For example, the smart match
       operator short-circuits whenever possible, but "grep" does not.

           $a      $b        Type of Match Implied    Matching Code
           ======  =====     =====================    =============
           Any     undef     undefined                !defined $a

           Any     Object    invokes ~~ overloading on $object, or dies

           Hash    CodeRef   sub truth for each key[1] !grep { !$b->($_) } keys %$a
           Array   CodeRef   sub truth for each elt[1] !grep { !$b->($_) } @$a
           Any     CodeRef   scalar sub truth          $b->($a)

           Hash    Hash      hash keys identical (every key is found in both hashes)
           Array   Hash      hash keys intersection   grep { exists $b->{$_} } @$a
           Regex   Hash      hash key grep            grep /$a/, keys %$b
           undef   Hash      always false (undef can't be a key)
           Any     Hash      hash entry existence     exists $b->{$a}

           Hash    Array     hash keys intersection   grep { exists $a->{$_} } @$b
           Array   Array     arrays are comparable[2]
           Regex   Array     array grep               grep /$a/, @$b
           undef   Array     array contains undef     grep !defined, @$b
           Any     Array     match against an array element[3]
                                                      grep $a ~~ $_, @$b

           Hash    Regex     hash key grep            grep /$b/, keys %$a
           Array   Regex     array grep               grep /$b/, @$a
           Any     Regex     pattern match            $a =~ /$b/

           Object  Any       invokes ~~ overloading on $object, or falls back:
           Any     Num       numeric equality         $a == $b
           Num     numish[4] numeric equality         $a == $b
           undef   Any       undefined                !defined($b)
           Any     Any       string equality          $a eq $b

        1 - empty hashes or arrays will match.
        2 - that is, each element smart-matches the element of same index in the
            other array. [3]
        3 - If a circular reference is found, we fall back to referential equality.
        4 - either a real number, or a string that looks like a number

       Custom matching via overloading

       You can change the way that an object is matched by overloading the "~~" operator. This may alter the
       usual smart match semantics.

       It should be noted that "~~" will refuse to work on objects that don't overload it (in order to avoid
       relying on the object's underlying structure).

       Note also that smart match's matching rules take precedence over overloading, so if $obj has smart
       match overloading, then

           $obj ~~ X

       will not automatically invoke the overload method with X as an argument; instead the table above is
       consulted as normal, and based in the type of X, overloading may or may not be invoked.

       See overload.

       Differences from Perl 6

       The Perl 5 smart match and "given"/"when" constructs are not absolutely identical to their Perl 6
       analogues. The most visible difference is that, in Perl 5, parentheses are required around the
       argument to "given()" and "when()" (except when this last one is used as a statement modifier).
       Parentheses in Perl 6 are always optional in a control construct such as "if()", "while()", or
       "when()"; they can't be made optional in Perl 5 without a great deal of potential confusion, because
       Perl 5 would parse the expression

         given $foo {
           ...
         }

       as though the argument to "given" were an element of the hash %foo, interpreting the braces as hash-element hashelement
       element syntax.

       The table of smart matches is not identical to that proposed by the Perl 6 specification, mainly due
       to the differences between Perl 6's and Perl 5's data models.

       In Perl 6, "when()" will always do an implicit smart match with its argument, whilst it is convenient
       in Perl 5 to suppress this implicit smart match in certain situations, as documented above. (The
       difference is largely because Perl 5 does not, even internally, have a boolean type.)

   Goto
       Although not for the faint of heart, Perl does support a "goto" statement.  There are three forms:
       "goto"-LABEL, "goto"-EXPR, and "goto"-&NAME.  A loop's LABEL is not actually a valid target for a
       "goto"; it's just the name of the loop.

       The "goto"-LABEL form finds the statement labeled with LABEL and resumes execution there.  It may not
       be used to go into any construct that requires initialization, such as a subroutine or a "foreach"
       loop.  It also can't be used to go into a construct that is optimized away.  It can be used to go
       almost anywhere else within the dynamic scope, including out of subroutines, but it's usually better
       to use some other construct such as "last" or "die".  The author of Perl has never felt the need to
       use this form of "goto" (in Perl, that is--C is another matter).

       The "goto"-EXPR form expects a label name, whose scope will be resolved dynamically.  This allows for
       computed "goto"s per FORTRAN, but isn't necessarily recommended if you're optimizing for
       maintainability:

           goto(("FOO", "BAR", "GLARCH")[$i]);

       The "goto"-&NAME form is highly magical, and substitutes a call to the named subroutine for the
       currently running subroutine.  This is used by "AUTOLOAD()" subroutines that wish to load another
       subroutine and then pretend that the other subroutine had been called in the first place (except that
       any modifications to @_ in the current subroutine are propagated to the other subroutine.)  After the
       "goto", not even "caller()" will be able to tell that this routine was called first.

       In almost all cases like this, it's usually a far, far better idea to use the structured control flow
       mechanisms of "next", "last", or "redo" instead of resorting to a "goto".  For certain applications,
       the catch and throw pair of "eval{}" and die() for exception processing can also be a prudent
       approach.

   PODs: Embedded Documentation
       Perl has a mechanism for intermixing documentation with source code.  While it's expecting the
       beginning of a new statement, if the compiler encounters a line that begins with an equal sign and a
       word, like this

           =head1 Here There Be Pods!

       Then that text and all remaining text up through and including a line beginning with "=cut" will be
       ignored.  The format of the intervening text is described in perlpod.

       This allows you to intermix your source code and your documentation text freely, as in

           =item snazzle($)

           The snazzle() function will behave in the most spectacular
           form that you can possibly imagine, not even excepting
           cybernetic pyrotechnics.

           =cut back to the compiler, nuff of this pod stuff!

           sub snazzle($) {
               my $thingie = shift;
               .........
           }

       Note that pod translators should look at only paragraphs beginning with a pod directive (it makes
       parsing easier), whereas the compiler actually knows to look for pod escapes even in the middle of a
       paragraph.  This means that the following secret stuff will be ignored by both the compiler and the
       translators.

           $a=3;
           =secret stuff
            warn "Neither POD nor CODE!?"
           =cut back
           print "got $a\n";

       You probably shouldn't rely upon the "warn()" being podded out forever.  Not all pod translators are
       well-behaved in this regard, and perhaps the compiler will become pickier.

       One may also use pod directives to quickly comment out a section of code.

   Plain Old Comments (Not!)
       Perl can process line directives, much like the C preprocessor.  Using this, one can control Perl's
       idea of filenames and line numbers in error or warning messages (especially for strings that are
       processed with "eval()").  The syntax for this mechanism is the same as for most C preprocessors: it
       matches the regular expression

           # example: '# line 42 "new_filename.plx"'
           /^\#   \s*
             line \s+ (\d+)   \s*
             (?:\s("?)([^"]+)\2)? \s*
            $/x

       with $1 being the line number for the next line, and $3 being the optional filename (specified with
       or without quotes).

       There is a fairly obvious gotcha included with the line directive: Debuggers and profilers will only
       show the last source line to appear at a particular line number in a given file.  Care should be
       taken not to cause line number collisions in code you'd like to debug later.

       Here are some examples that you should be able to type into your command shell:

           % perl
           # line 200 "bzzzt"
           # the `#' on the previous line must be the first char on line
           die 'foo';
           __END__
           foo at bzzzt line 201.

           % perl
           # line 200 "bzzzt"
           eval qq[\n#line 2001 ""\ndie 'foo']; print $@;
           __END__
           foo at - line 2001.

           % perl
           eval qq[\n#line 200 "foo bar"\ndie 'foo']; print $@;
           __END__
           foo at foo bar line 200.

           % perl
           # line 345 "goop"
           eval "\n#line " . __LINE__ . ' "' . __FILE__ ."\"\ndie 'foo'";
           print $@;
           __END__
           foo at goop line 345.



perl v5.12.5                                     2012-11-03                                       PERLSYN(1)