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Perl - A language beloved by many for its inside-out "type" definitions, inscrutable "precedence" rules, and heavy "overloading" of the function-call mechanism. (Well, actually, people first switched to C because they found lowercase identifiers easier to read than upper.) Perl is written in C, so it's not surprising that Perl borrowed a few ideas from it.
Perl - Cite This Source - This Definition - Browse Related Terms: data type, Operator, polymorphism, SV, type, type casting, typed lexical, typedef
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Perl - An "argument"-passing mechanism in which the "formal arguments" refer directly to the "actual arguments", and the "subroutine" can change the actual arguments by changing the formal arguments. That is, the formal argument is an "alias" for the actual argument. See also "call by value".
Perl - Cite This Source - This Definition - Browse Related Terms: actual arguments, argument, call-by-value, formal arguments, function, parameter, prototype, subroutine, variadic
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Perl - A small integer representative of a unit of orthography. Historically, characters were usually stored as fixed-width integers (typically in a byte, or maybe two, depending on the character set), but with the advent of UTF-8, characters are often stored in a variable number of bytes depending on the size of the integer that represents the character. Perl manages this transparently for you, for the most part.
Perl - Cite This Source - This Definition - Browse Related Terms: null character, null string, string, substring, text, transliterate, virtual, word
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Perl - An "operator" that surrounds its "operand", like the angle operator, or parentheses, or a hug.
Perl - Cite This Source - This Definition - Browse Related Terms: binary operator, infix, operand, postfix, prefix, relational operator, term, ternary, trinary, unary operator
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Perl - A user-defined "type", implemented in Perl via a "package" that provides (either directly or by inheritance) methods (that is, subroutines) to handle instances of the class (its objects). See also "inheritance".
Perl - Cite This Source - This Definition - Browse Related Terms: accessor method, class method, destroy, destructor, dispatch, encapsulation, global destruction, Handler, invocant, invocation, method, static method
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Perl - A "method" whose "invocant" is a "package" name, not an "object" reference. A method associated with the class as a whole.
Perl - Cite This Source - This Definition - Browse Related Terms: accessor method, class, destroy, destructor, dispatch, encapsulation, global destruction, Handler, invocant, invocation, method, static method
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Perl - An "anonymous" subroutine that, when a reference to it is generated at run time, keeps track of the identities of externally visible lexical variables even after those lexical variables have supposedly gone out of "scope". They're called "closures" because this sort of behavior gives mathematicians a sense of closure.
Perl - Cite This Source - This Definition - Browse Related Terms: Alias, dynamic scoping, global, lexical scoping, lexical variable, local, scope, scratchpad, static, static scoping, static variable
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Perl - The word returned by the ref function when you apply it to a reference to a subroutine. See also "CV".
Perl - Cite This Source - This Definition - Browse Related Terms: address operator, anonymous, autovivification, composer, dereference, funny character, garbage collection, hard reference, indirection, Pointer, PV, Reference, referent, soft reference, symbolic reference
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Perl - A system that writes code for you in a low-level language, such as code to implement the backend of a compiler. See "program generator".
Perl - Cite This Source - This Definition - Browse Related Terms: Architecture, awk, bytecode, glue language, minimalism, platform, port, porter, program generator, script
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Perl - A "regular expression" subpattern whose real purpose is to execute some Perl code, for example, the
(?{...}) and (??{...}) subpatterns.
Perl - Cite This Source - This Definition - Browse Related Terms: alternatives, atomic operation, character class, cluster, metacharacter, quantifier, regex, regular expression, subpattern