Re: Small plperl documentation patch

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Tom Lane asked:

> Please, tell me that isn't so. $a is a reserved name now? What was
> Larry thinking?

It's not that bad, really. $a and $b have special meaning inside of
a sort subroutine as the two items being compared. Thus, you can write
something like this:

my @crooks = sort { lc $a cmp lc $b } @whitehouse;

to create a list sorted by lowercase (albeit not in the most efficient
matter). This will work even with "use strict" turned on, as $a and $b
will not trip Perl's strict-mode checking of undeclared variables. So,
the danger is very minor, but it's a good practice to not use them for
temporary variables in a script.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg(at)turnstep(dot)com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200510182220
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8

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