Re: [Fun With Perl] A Very Important Question

[Ariel Scolnicov <ariels@compugen.co.il>]

Tushar Samant <tushar@i-works.com> writes:

> What do you call $_?
> 
> Does the Camel book call it something, like it calls "{}" Larry and Moe?
> I don't have it here.
> 
> I am provisionally calling it "bottom". But the reason is so I can say:
> 
>     $$_ =~ y/0/1/; bless $_; #bless thee, Bottom, thou art translated!

This will lead to confusion, and should be avoided.  In the functional 
programming community, "bottom" (often written _|_, or any other sign
for "eet" (upside-down T)) denotes what imperative programmer
sometimes call "dynamic halt".

I.e., it refers to an undefined value of a (partial) function,
colloquially known as "infinite loop".

[...]

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