Does Perl 5 (or 6?) need another built-in variable for the -F switch?

japhy has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Much to my dismay, using the -F switch to perl does not set a variable. When I write code to quick-fix a file, for instance, I want to be able to do:

perl -F"\t" -lane 'munge(@F); print join($MAGIC_F_VAR, @F)' file
[download]

But I have to hard-code the "\t" in the join() function. Thoughts?

Jeff japhy Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and perl hacker
How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom