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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: underscores in numeric constants (was: how to truncate lines)
Message-ID: <11556@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 22 Feb 91 18:35:34 GMT
References: <1991Feb18.205238.14418@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> <1991Feb19.014649.133@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us> <11500@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <JBW.91Feb22125957@bigbird.bu.edu>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 14

In article <JBW.91Feb22125957@bigbird.bu.edu> jbw@bigbird.bu.edu (Joe Wells) writes:
: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes:
: 
:    perl -e 'print "*" x 1_000_000, "\n"' | perl -pe 'chop; $_=substr($_,0,80)."\n"'
:                          ^   ^
: 
: How long has this been in the language?  (The ability to put as many
: underscores as you want in the middle of a numeric constant.)  When was it
: added?

As near as I can recall, it's been in there since before version 2.
It's there as a sop to former Ada programmers.  :-)

Larry