Aside: Consult your perl documentation on the "English" module if you would like to use more descriptive names in the future. I don't "use English", but sometimes it helps code to be read more easily by non-Perl programmers or folks that are new to Perl.

The Camel book also has a huge list of "magic" variables in the back, which is well worth the read. There is probably a free list of this somewhere as well, I just prefer to read dead tree when I can.