Perl definitions beginning with W

A message printed to the "STDERR" stream to the effect that something might be wrong but isn't worth blowing up over. See "warn" in perlfunc and the warnings pragma.
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Browse Related Terms: errno, Error, exception, exception handling, fatal error, line number, standard error, STDERR

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An expression which, when its value changes, causes a breakpoint in the Perl debugger.
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Browse Related Terms: indirect filehandle, mortal, Patch, side effects, v-string

A "character" that moves your cursor but doesn't otherwise put anything on your screen. Typically refers to any of: space, tab, line feed, carriage return, or form feed.
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Browse Related Terms: comment, continuation, Line, newline, one-liner

In normal "computerese", the piece of data of the size most efficiently handled by your computer, typically 32 bits or so, give or take a few powers of 2. In Perl culture, it more often refers to an alphanumeric "identifier" (including underscores), or to a string of nonwhitespace characters bounded by whitespace or string boundaries.
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Browse Related Terms: character, null character, null string, string, substring, text, transliterate, virtual

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Your current "directory", from which relative pathnames are interpreted by the "operating system". The operating system knows your current directory because you told it with a chdir or because you started out in the place where your parent "process" was when you were born.
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Browse Related Terms: core dump, current working directory, directory handle, File, filesystem, home directory, named pipe, Root, RTFM

A program or subroutine that runs some other program or subroutine for you, modifying some of its input or output to better suit your purposes.
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Browse Related Terms: currently selected output channel, filter, I/O, standard input, standard output, STDIN, STDOUT

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What You See Is What You Get. Usually used when something that appears on the screen matches how it will eventually look, like Perl's format declarations. Also used to mean the opposite of magic because everything works exactly as it appears, as in the three-argument form of open.
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Browse Related Terms: autoload, declaration, default, dweomer, procedure, syscall, XSUB

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