In response to a question I asked earlier today, cianoz provided a very helpful answer straight from the end of the perlvar man page.

However, I do make it a point to RTFM before I ask. I had already looked over perlman:perlvar on-line here and hadn't seen the section cianoz quoted. It turns out that it's one of two sections at the end of the perlvar man page ("Technical Note on the Syntax of Variable Names" and "BUGS"), that simply aren't there in the on-line document. (And they're not just missing from here, either; the perlvar doc over at http://www.perl.com is the same as the one here at perlmonks.)

My man pages are from 5.6.0, and I don't find an identifying version number in the on-lines copies, so is this just a version difference?

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RE: man perlvar != perlman:perlvar ?
by mdillon (Priest) on Oct 26, 2000 at 03:01 UTC
    you are correct that the problem is version skew. if i recall, the suggestion has come up before of labelling the perlman:* pages with a version number. i thought it was a good idea then, and continue to believe so now.

    update: just for the record, i agree with merlyn (infra) that it is not time to update the Perl Monks perlman pages from 5.005x yet. i was suggesting only a label.

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      Well, a label is fine. But the online docs are in fact the most recent stable version of Perl, so it wouldn't make sense to update them until 5.6.1 comes out.

      -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[reply]
        It varies from doc to doc, but try tie and you will see that, like Camel 2, many of them are actually 5.003 specific.

        There was a thread once where someone was massively bit by this because perldiag mentioned nothing about a warning involving "our"...

[reply]
RE: man perlvar != perlman:perlvar ?
by merlyn (Sage) on Oct 26, 2000 at 02:27 UTC
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Re: man perlvar != perlman:perlvar ?
by Fastolfe (Vicar) on Oct 26, 2000 at 01:55 UTC
    I suspect so. There are many man pages here on the site like this. (And a few that are just plain broken/mangled.)
[reply]

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