I am writing a module that ideally will use sort-style comparison functions that take the two sides using the "special" $a and $b variables. But a simple test 

perl -le ' $a=27; package foo; print $a'

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indicates that $a is not as special as, say, $_{a} would be.

So here's the question:

how do I load data into $a and $b so that a sort comparator defined in a distant module can see them?

I can fall back to having the comparator function take $_[0] and $_[1] if I must.

In reply to just how special are $a and $b these days? by davidnicol

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