Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!mailrus!ames!elroy!cit-vax!ucla-cs!sdcrdcf!markb
From: markb@sdcrdcf.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Perl question: what do {{ and }} mean?
Message-ID: <5367@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jun 88 18:04:18 GMT
References: <335@rhesus.primate.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: markb@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Mark Biggar)
Organization: Unisys - System Development Group, Santa Monica
Lines: 18

In article <335@rhesus.primate.wisc.edu> bin@rhesus.primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) writes:
>The perl 2.0 manual contains two examples that use {{ and }}
>instead of { and } to bracket subroutines.  One of them says
>to note the double curly brackets.  But what do they mean?
>The explanation is not in the manual, or at least I can't
>find it.

Those are realy 4 symbols not 2.  The {} that delimit the body of a
subroutine are not a BLOCK (see man page) so if you want to do things
like use "last" as a pseudo-return statement you have to have an additional
set of {} delimiting a real BLOCK.

I have complained about this to Larry before (as well as I can see no
reason why "last" can work right in a "do { ... }" expression too.)

Mark Biggar
{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,akgua,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!markb
markb@rdcf.sm.unisys.com