Cheers,

JohnGG

I say "$" as just "dollar", not "dollar sign". When I'm talking about punctuation variables, I name the punctuation marks, but sometimes use the English names (e.g., "input record separator" instead of "dollar slash").

Other variables, I think I just drop the sigil half the time. It's "some scalar", and "odds".

Mostly, though, I just don't talk in code. I write it—in emails, in chats, here, and in the software I'm writing.

If I'm showing code to someone, there's usually no need to pronounce the sigil at all (e.g. "friends has 2 elements"). I'd probably be more likely to say "scalar" and "array" for "$" and "@" in this situation. I might even call the variable by its value instead of by its name (e.g. "Then I 'draw' the circle." for $form->draw()).

If I'm dictating code, completeness and clarity is important, so I'd specify the symbols by name (e.g. "dollar friends equal 2 semicolon.").

Ok, I'll bite. When and under hat circumstances are you "dictating" code?


holli, /regexed monk/

When I'm writing code using Microsoft Speech Recognition. It goes something like this:

me:  my dollar sign t=1;
computer: my dolls are singing tequila 1 semi goin;
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I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum

Yes, inquiring minds need to know. (Interviews, perhaps?)

When discussing or teaching syntax

Things like $odds[3] and $table{'John'} become "the scalar element with index 3 of the array odds" and "the scalar element with key 'John' of the hash 'table'". I know it is a bit long in the mouth, but it is a course for Perl newbies.

update: if I have to pronounce the name, I usually just leave of any sigils: $a becomes "a" etc.

My habits are pretty much the same as Kyle's (should I be worried?).

The only thing I have to add is that $_ is so common that it's gotten shortened to "dollar-under" in my head. The cool thing is that Perl still understands me when I don't fully pronounce the "underscore".

Update:Apparently I learned it from BASIC, though that would have been much earlier than the late 80s, but it stuck.

Probably from BASIC. Early versions required String field names to start with a $ (ie $a, $bc, etc.) If it didn't, it was assumed numeric and you usualy ended up with a letter that resulted in a zero. This is from MBASIC, circa 1975. Also, field names were limited to only two characters back then, and if they started with i thru r they were considered integer, otherwise floating. How did we ever survive? ;-)

In every BASIC I'm familiar with, the $ came at the *end* of the variable. And this thread reminds me of a thread I started many years ago in comp.lang.perl.misc about pronunciation. Much of the advice there is good, the obvious error being to pronounce the # sign as "pound".

I used to call "$" "string" because that's what it was called in BASIC. A string variable FOO$ was read, "foo string".

I make an exception for variables with short names: “dollar underscore”.

I pronounce everything if I am reciting a perl script over the phone. (Don’t laugh, this happened to me last summer. I went on holiday without net access, a server died in my absence, my colleagues needed guidance on how to make the spare server work, in lieu of remembering how to use the find command I wrote a perl script. With pen and paper and lines I numbered myself.)

If something has a real name, I tend to call it by that name and I choose names accordingly (e.g., singular nouns for scalars, plural nouns for arrays/hashes). In cases where it may be ambiguous, I'll pronounce the sigil as the normal character, with the one oddity that, unless I'm paying attention, I have a tendency to pronounce $ as "hex" instead of "dollar". (My first programming experiences were with Apple ][s, where hexadecimal numbers were writen as "$E8".)

For punctuation variables, there's not much choice but to read off the string of characters literally, although, as another oddity, I generally pronounce _ as "sub", making $_ "hexub" ("hex-sub"). Fortunately, I speak in Perl rarely enough that I've never yet encountered a situation where it was ambiguous whether "sub" meant the _ character or the sub keyword...

 
for (@foo) {  print $_;  }
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Not strictly geared to Perl per se, but see also the Jargon File entry for ASCII . . .

~ is pronounced squiggle - like SKWIG-ULL. (in my experience.. tilde just doesn't seem to get used as much)

I think that's the first time I've heard that one. I use "tilde" or the type of operator (e.g. ~~ would be "smart match").