Perl (getting computer geeky)

H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > Actually, I think Perl is interesting, as it's the only programming
> > language I'm familiar with that has case markings.
> It doesn't. It just has number markings. Or, more precisely, it has
> "grammatical gender", which is what $, @, and % really are. And it's not
> the first language to do this, too. Applesoft BASIC, from the old days,
> suffixed string variables with $. I forget if it explicitly marked
> numerical variables, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
Sorry, number markings, not case markings. I realized I used the
wrong word right after I sent the message out.  I had been going
to say gender markings, since other sigils mark objects of clearly
different sorts (functions, references, typeglobs), but it seems
to me that the sets of values are all the same sort of thing, all
members of the value-carrying gender, if you like. I'm not convinced
but that I'm stretching these  terms all out of fit.

In various dialects of BASIC, you could mark variable with a % to
indicate they were integers. Actually, Unix shell variables were
probably the origin of Perl sigils.  But in neither BASIC nor sh
can you alter the gender marker on a variable to get a different
presentation of the variable's value.

> ...practically speaking, there is a vast difference between
> programming in BF [*] and programming in C
> [*] See http://www.catseye.mb.ca/esoteric/bf/
Ooh, I like this one. I'll have to see if I can dig out a couple
of those single-instruction architectures.

        Erich