Talk:Perl

Article Checklist for "Perl"

Workgroup category or categories	Computers Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developing article: beyond a stub, but incomplete
Underlinked article?	Yes
Basic cleanup done?	No
Checklist last edited by	Georg Heidenreich 22:53, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

To learn how to fill out this checklist, please see CZ:The Article Checklist.

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I'd like to import the "good article" version of wikipedia's Perl entry. Is there an efficient way of importing articles from there? or do I have to copy/paste the source? --Joey Kelly

Unfortunately, no, there isn't. See: CZ:How to convert Wikipedia articles to Citizendium articles, which I am about to fix up as there seems to be a demand for it... --Larry Sanger 16:58, 14 February 2007 (CST)

Now I'm really curious what "the arbitrary limitations of many scripting languages at the time" were. Really. --Markus Baumeister 16:41, 7 March 2007 (CST)

I've been lurking around for quite a while and I thought I should finally contribute. When I wrote the new Perl page, I tried to eliminate all wording from the original stump that could be construed as originating from WP (sorry, now we'll never know what the "arbitrary limitations" are ;) ). I actually have one advantage: since I currently live in China, it is very awkward to read WP (you need to use proxies because of the "Great Firewall") *) so I wasn't even tempted to copy anything from them.
I wrote this first draft on my private mediawiki, the CZ templates are of course not available, e.g. my citation style is way off. Since I am relocating to Europe soon (temporarily for 14 months), starting June 10 I won't be able to use my computers for several weeks. That is a good time for all of you to mess it up thoroughly ;) !
*) this is how I happened to stumble over CZ in the first place - now of course I'm convinced it is the better way --Georg Heidenreich 09:02, 31 May 2007 (CDT) (newbie)

Well done, Georg--thanks for the article on one of my favorite computer subjects. --Larry Sanger 09:13, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

Globs?

The article lists scalars, arrays and hashes as the Perl data types, which is ok because they're the most important, but it then says "All variables in Perl are of these three data types" and "Other data types are abstractions such as filehandles, subroutines, symbol table entries, etc."

I think those two lines are taking the white lie a little too far. Globs are certainly their own first order data type, complete with a sigil (*color) and bear mentioning.

PS I realize the perldata man page also says three data types, it's caught in that same white lie.

Scope

The "scope" paragraph is very confusing. Part of the problem is its smashing together several very similar concepts into one paragraph. I will separate it out into several discussions, first global vs lexical with "local" being discussed as part of global. Then the various ways to declare variables.