in reply to searching for clear ways to overwrite the empty string

s/^\z/?/ for $longvariablename;

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Re^2: searching for clear ways to overwrite the empty string
by graff (Chancellor) on Apr 20, 2016 at 00:38 UTC
    That's neat -- and it could be done like this to make sure that both "undef" and "empty string" are handled without warnings:
    $_ //= "?" or s/^\z/?/ for ( $this_variable, $that_variable, $another_ +variable );
    (UPDATE: But I'm inclined to think that when there's a problem with too many long variable names, it might mean that those variable names really ought to be keys in a hash.)

    (updated again to fix the mis-typed operator in the snippet.)

      Parens not needed.