english(3)
NAME
English - use nice English (or awk) names for ugly punctu
ation variables
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 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 mod
ule.
See perlvar for a complete list of these.
PERFORMANCE
- This module can provoke sizeable inefficiencies for regu
lar expressions, due to unfortunate implementation
details. If performance matters 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.