I suggest polytypic.

As to whether it's a good idea to do it, I really prefer my variables to be self-documenting all the way through the code, and it seems an unneccessary shortcut. If I did it, it probably would lead to confusion down the road.

Update: I'm not able to come up with the origin of the word sigil, but I first saw it in Damian Conway's Exegesis 2, and I know the term is used by gnat and japhy.

___
-DA
> perl -MPOSIX -e'$ENV{TZ}="US/Eastern";print ctime(10**9)'
Sat Sep  8 21:46:40 2001
[download]

Says [da]:

I'm not able to come up with the origin of the word sigil, but I first saw it in Damian Conway's Exegesis 2, and I know the term is used by gnat and japhy.

The term 'sigil' to mean the funny character at the front of a Perl variable was coined on 3 March 1999 by Philip Gwyn. I immediately posted about it to p5p:

The source code actually uses the term `funny characters' to refer to the $@%*& characters that select the variable type. This terminology leaves a lot to be desired, but until now, I'd never heard a better suggestion. They don't really have a good name. This has sometimes been a problem for me when I've written documentation. The temptation is to pretend that the funny character is part of the variable name, which it isn't.

Philip Gwyn just used the word `sigil'. This struck me as a really wonderful coinage that shouldn't be lost. The spelling of `sigil' suggests `sign', which is good, and the word doesn't presently have any other meaning in the Perl context, also good.

Glancing over man pages like `perldata' I can see a lot of places where the explanations would become simpler or more accurate if the word `sigil' were used.

Finally, according to the dictionary here, it means:

A sign or image considered magical.

Which is a really perfect description of it.

The term started catching on right away, and has gradually gained popularity.

--
Mark Dominus
Perl Paraphernalia

Well, Mr. Gwyn might have been the first to apply the term to Perl, but he surely didn't coin it!

The word sigil means a seal or device, but the word usually denotes a magical sigil, a glyph used in ritual or sympathetic magick as a focus.

My vote for a word to mean a symbol made from a combination of sigils goes to "superpolysigilistic" (with or without Julie Andrews).

I've seen signet used reciently, in official circles. I remember looking it up, after reading something by Larry or Damian.

Sigil is another word for signet. (http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=sigil)

—John

Which of course to me sounds like polycygnant, or "having multiple swans." The pond by my house, for example, is polycygnant.

Of course, I suppose we could (if we're really trying to conjure up as much confusion as possible) overload THAT word as well: suppose a polycygnant variable is one that has multiple attributes; it's not totally out of line: attribute ~ albatross (worn around the variable's neck) ~ swan (another large white aquatic bird).

Of course, this babble is brought to you by the virus (in the microbial, not digital sense) I contracted yesterday, so take it FWIW.

Spud Zeppelin * spud@spudzeppelin.com

Since polycygnant with Perl, and the root sygnant isn't in general use, I don't think it's confusing since the "Perl context" should have you thinking of one vocabulary, and "Pond context" another. I can see them overlapping if you published an article on using Perl with your pond, though.

Or, maybe polycygnant is what you call what happens when you have a program that requires both 1.x and 2.0 of cygwin.dll