Things would be much easier, if only things worked the way I thought ... but then they'd be something else ; perl should really work the way I think, I shouldn't have to learn how it works

That's really not what I meant. I meant "why is it like that, is there some reason I don't know about?"

Ok, but you said you saw references; cite your references :D ; If they're all in your head, thats cool, but we can't see inside; my experience seeing such reasoning comes from a "professor type" who isn't satisfied with Logic-Wall and "backwards compatibility rules" and has for 26 years

Here is another tip http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/tags ... 26 years ago perl-1.0 a "replacement" for awk and sed

So the reason is, A Larry Wall can't think of everything :) thats the way it was in the beginning, and backwards compatibility is important :)

In 1987-12-18 the Larry Wall released a "replacement" for awk and sed perl-1.0 with barewords for filehandles; all variables were globals

Maybe there is more info in perl-1.0 sources, or in the usenet postings from 1987, happy hunting

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: Chickens do that :)

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: To show the armadillo it could be done.

You must always remember that the primary goal is to drain the swamp even when you are hip-deep in alligators.

Something from the future .... might yield some insight .. the current I guess http://doc.perl6.org/language/variables#Sigilless_variables

A decade before http://www.perl.com/pub/2001/05/08/exegesis2.html#a%20sigil%20is%20for%20life,%20not%20just%20for%20value%20type
http://perlcabal.org/syn/S02.html#Sigils
http://perlcabal.org/syn/Differences.html#Sigils

?node_id=3989;HIT=apocalypse;re=N and ?node_id=3989;HIT=exegesis;re=N

http://www.perl6.org/archive/, Filehandles should use * as a type prefix if typeglobs are eliminated.

Intermediate Perl 2012 Page 116 -- "We'd have a much easier time if filehandles had sigils!"