in reply to Re: Parsing XML in a __DATA__ Block
in thread Parsing XML in a __DATA__ Block

Funny, I always use \*DATA, but plain *DATA works equally well. Is there any difference between the 2?

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Re^3: Parsing XML in a __DATA__ Block
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Jun 01, 2005 at 09:25 UTC
    \*DATA is a real reference (typeglob reference), *DATA is not (bare typeglob).

    Those definitions extracted from `perldoc perlsub' (look for \*).

    MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"
    I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).
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Re^3: Parsing XML in a __DATA__ Block
by runrig (Abbot) on Jun 01, 2005 at 17:25 UTC
    In most cases it doesn't matter, but it causes extra pain when you want to write a function that accurately needs to know "do I have a filehandle", like in File::Copy:
        my $from_a_handle = (ref($from)
                         ? (ref($from) eq 'GLOB'
                           || UNIVERSAL::isa($from, 'GLOB')
                           || UNIVERSAL::isa($from, 'IO::Handle'))
                         : (ref(\$from) eq 'GLOB'));

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