Those 'Special wotsits' you reffer to are actually very usefull (and intimidating at first glance) variables that are available to you - think of them as 'built-in' variables that exist in every program you write.

For example, @INC is an array that contains all the paths on your system that Perl will search to find any modules you have included, such as use CGI;

All these special variables are listed at perlvar.

Jeff

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