in reply to Internal Variables or Strange Critters?

Since chromatic pointed out these might be global typeglobs associated with the internals, I broadened my search. Lo and behold, there is an armada of other strange beasties:
! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) - _ + = @! @@ @# @$ @% @^ @& @* @( @) @- @_ @+ @= %! %@ %# %$ %% %^ %& %* %( %) %- %_ %+ %= } [ ] < > : ; " ' ? / @} @[ @] @< @> @: @; @" @' @? @/ %} %[ %] %< %> %: %; %" %' %? %/ Note: @{ and %{ are reserved syntactically. @_ is used internally. %! is hooked into Errno.pm
Surreal. It's almost like finding that the one bedroom apartment I was living in had a tennis court and an indoor pool in the "closet".

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(tye)Re: Internal Variables or Strange Critters? (Addendum)
by tye (Sage) on Apr 19, 2001 at 09:52 UTC

    Most of those don't mean anything special to Perl. They are just variables. But punctuation variables are nice for obfuscation because they are immune to use strict.

    You can also have variables named "{", you just can't access them as simply: ${"{"}, @{"{"}, %{"{"} (and that doesn't work under use strict).

    You are exploring the corners of the parser, not of Perl's variables.

    %! is special (see Errno). @+ and @- were added to Perl recently (regex related). @_ should be familiar. (:

            - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")