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From: mayer@sono.uucp (Ronald &)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: strange (IMHO) eval behavior [summary]
Message-ID: <MAYER.91May31090335@porky.sono.uucp>
Date: 31 May 91 16:03:35 GMT
References: <MAYER.91May30150835@porky.sono.uucp>
Sender: mayer@sono.uucp (Ronald Mayer)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Acuson; Mountain View, California
Lines: 9
In-Reply-To: mayer@sono.uucp's message of 30 May 91 15:08:35

[In a recent mail message I asked people to explain this behavior:]
>
>% perl -e '@a = eval ("*\n"); print "@a\n";'
>[A bunch of random control characters which don't mean anything to me.]
>
>% perl -e '@a = eval ("*\n"); print "@a";'
>*main'
>

Thanks to a number of you for pointing out that *\n is a reference to
a variable called "\n".  The bunch of random characters occured from
the print statement when I try to print a "\n" concatenated with the
"unprintable binary data" contained in the *name value.

# perl -e '$\
= "Almost another Perl hacker,"; print $\
'
        Ron Mayer
        mayer@sono.uucp   sun!sono!mayer

[Note: mandantory "\n" after each $
 Why does this JAPH return "Almost another Perl hacker," from csh and
 "> > Almost another Perl hacker,Almost another Perl hacker,$" from
 sh?  [My guess: In sh the "\n" doesn't need to be '\' quoted, so from
 sh I'm actually setting '$\' instead of $"\n".]
]