PERLFUNC(1)



PERLFUNC(1)            Perl Programmers Reference Guide            PERLFUNC(1)

NAME
       perlfunc - Perl builtin functions

DESCRIPTION
       The functions in this section can serve as terms in an expression.
       They fall into two major categories: list operators and named unary
       operators.  These differ in their precedence relationship with a
       following comma.  (See the precedence table in perlop.)  List operators
       take more than one argument, while unary operators can never take more
       than one argument.  Thus, a comma terminates the argument of a unary
       operator, but merely separates the arguments of a list operator.  A
       unary operator generally provides scalar context to its argument, while
       a list operator may provide either scalar or list contexts for its
       arguments.  If it does both, scalar arguments come first and list
       argument follow, and there can only ever be one such list argument.
       For instance, "splice" has three scalar arguments followed by a list,
       whereas "gethostbyname" has four scalar arguments.

       In the syntax descriptions that follow, list operators that expect a
       list (and provide list context for elements of the list) are shown with
       LIST as an argument.  Such a list may consist of any combination of
       scalar arguments or list values; the list values will be included in
       the list as if each individual element were interpolated at that point
       in the list, forming a longer single-dimensional list value.  Commas
       should separate literal elements of the LIST.

       Any function in the list below may be used either with or without
       parentheses around its arguments.  (The syntax descriptions omit the
       parentheses.)  If you use parentheses, the simple but occasionally
       surprising rule is this: It looks like a function, therefore it is a
       function, and precedence doesn't matter.  Otherwise it's a list
       operator or unary operator, and precedence does matter.  Whitespace
       between the function and left parenthesis doesn't count, so sometimes
       you need to be careful:

           print 1+2+4;      # Prints 7.
           print(1+2) + 4;   # Prints 3.
           print (1+2)+4;    # Also prints 3!
           print +(1+2)+4;   # Prints 7.
           print ((1+2)+4);  # Prints 7.

       If you run Perl with the "use warnings" pragma, it can warn you about
       this.  For example, the third line above produces:

           print (...) interpreted as function at - line 1.
           Useless use of integer addition in void context at - line 1.

       A few functions take no arguments at all, and therefore work as neither
       unary nor list operators.  These include such functions as "time" and
       "endpwent".  For example, "time+86_400" always means "time() + 86_400".

       For functions that can be used in either a scalar or list context,
       nonabortive failure is generally indicated in scalar context by
       returning the undefined value, and in list context by returning the
       empty list.

       Remember the following important rule: There is no rule that relates
       the behavior of an expression in list context to its behavior in scalar
       context, or vice versa.  It might do two totally different things.
       Each operator and function decides which sort of value would be most
       appropriate to return in scalar context.  Some operators return the
       length of the list that would have been returned in list context.  Some
       operators return the first value in the list.  Some operators return
       the last value in the list.  Some operators return a count of
       successful operations.  In general, they do what you want, unless you
       want consistency.

       A named array in scalar context is quite different from what would at
       first glance appear to be a list in scalar context.  You can't get a
       list like "(1,2,3)" into being in scalar context, because the compiler
       knows the context at compile time.  It would generate the scalar comma
       operator there, not the list concatenation version of the comma.  That
       means it was never a list to start with.

       In general, functions in Perl that serve as wrappers for system calls
       ("syscalls") of the same name (like chown(2), fork(2), closedir(2),
       etc.) return true when they succeed and "undef" otherwise, as is
       usually mentioned in the descriptions below.  This is different from
       the C interfaces, which return "-1" on failure.  Exceptions to this
       rule include "wait", "waitpid", and "syscall".  System calls also set
       the special $! variable on failure.  Other functions do not, except
       accidentally.

       Extension modules can also hook into the Perl parser to define new
       kinds of keyword-headed expression.  These may look like functions, but
       may also look completely different.  The syntax following the keyword
       is defined entirely by the extension.  If you are an implementor, see
       "PL_keyword_plugin" in perlapi for the mechanism.  If you are using
       such a module, see the module's documentation for details of the syntax
       that it defines.

   Perl Functions by Category
       Here are Perl's functions (including things that look like functions,
       like some keywords and named operators) arranged by category.  Some
       functions appear in more than one place.  Any warnings, including those
       produced by keywords, are described in perldiag and warnings.

       Functions for SCALARs or strings
           "chomp", "chop", "chr", "crypt", "fc", "hex", "index", "lc",
           "lcfirst", "length", "oct", "ord", "pack", "q//", "qq//",
           "reverse", "rindex", "sprintf", "substr", "tr///", "uc", "ucfirst",
           "y///"

           "fc" is available only if the "fc" feature is enabled or if it is
           prefixed with "CORE::".  The "fc" feature is enabled automatically
           with a "use v5.16" (or higher) declaration in the current scope.

       Regular expressions and pattern matching
           "m//", "pos", "qr//", "quotemeta", "s///", "split", "study"

       Numeric functions
           "abs", "atan2", "cos", "exp", "hex", "int", "log", "oct", "rand",
           "sin", "sqrt", "srand"

       Functions for real @ARRAYs
           "each", "keys", "pop", "push", "shift", "splice", "unshift",
           "values"

       Functions for list data
           "grep", "join", "map", "qw//", "reverse", "sort", "unpack"

       Functions for real %HASHes
           "delete", "each", "exists", "keys", "values"

       Input and output functions
           "binmode", "close", "closedir", "dbmclose", "dbmopen", "die",
           "eof", "fileno", "flock", "format", "getc", "print", "printf",
           "read", "readdir", "readline", "rewinddir", "say", "seek",
           "seekdir", "select", "syscall", "sysread", "sysseek", "syswrite",
           "tell", "telldir", "truncate", "warn", "write"

           "say" is available only if the "say" feature is enabled or if it is
           prefixed with "CORE::".  The "say" feature is enabled automatically
           with a "use v5.10" (or higher) declaration in the current scope.

       Functions for fixed-length data or records
           "pack", "read", "syscall", "sysread", "sysseek", "syswrite",
           "unpack", "vec"

       Functions for filehandles, files, or directories
           "-X", "chdir", "chmod", "chown", "chroot", "fcntl", "glob",
           "ioctl", "link", "lstat", "mkdir", "open", "opendir", "readlink",
           "rename", "rmdir", "select", "stat", "symlink", "sysopen", "umask",
           "unlink", "utime"

       Keywords related to the control flow of your Perl program
           "break", "caller", "continue", "die", "do", "dump", "eval",
           "evalbytes", "exit", "__FILE__", "goto", "last", "__LINE__",
           "next", "__PACKAGE__", "redo", "return", "sub", "__SUB__",
           "wantarray"

           "break" is available only if you enable the experimental "switch"
           feature or use the "CORE::" prefix.  The "switch" feature also
           enables the "default", "given" and "when" statements, which are
           documented in "Switch Statements" in perlsyn.  The "switch" feature
           is enabled automatically with a "use v5.10" (or higher) declaration
           in the current scope.  In Perl v5.14 and earlier, "continue"
           required the "switch" feature, like the other keywords.

           "evalbytes" is only available with the "evalbytes" feature (see
           feature) or if prefixed with "CORE::".  "__SUB__" is only available
           with the "current_sub" feature or if prefixed with "CORE::".  Both
           the "evalbytes" and "current_sub" features are enabled
           automatically with a "use v5.16" (or higher) declaration in the
           current scope.

       Keywords related to scoping
           "caller", "import", "local", "my", "our", "package", "state", "use"

           "state" is available only if the "state" feature is enabled or if
           it is prefixed with "CORE::".  The "state" feature is enabled
           automatically with a "use v5.10" (or higher) declaration in the
           current scope.

       Miscellaneous functions
           "defined", "formline", "lock", "prototype", "reset", "scalar",
           "undef"

       Functions for processes and process groups
           "alarm", "exec", "fork", "getpgrp", "getppid", "getpriority",
           "kill", "pipe", "qx//", "readpipe", "setpgrp", "setpriority",
           "sleep", "system", "times", "wait", "waitpid"

       Keywords related to Perl modules
           "do", "import", "no", "package", "require", "use"

       Keywords related to classes and object-orientation
           "bless", "dbmclose", "dbmopen", "package", "ref", "tie", "tied",
           "untie", "use"

       Low-level socket functions
           "accept", "bind", "connect", "getpeername", "getsockname",
           "getsockopt", "listen", "recv", "send", "setsockopt", "shutdown",
           "socket", "socketpair"

       System V interprocess communication functions
           "msgctl", "msgget", "msgrcv", "msgsnd", "semctl", "semget",
           "semop", "shmctl", "shmget", "shmread", "shmwrite"

       Fetching user and group info
           "endgrent", "endhostent", "endnetent", "endpwent", "getgrent",
           "getgrgid", "getgrnam", "getlogin", "getpwent", "getpwnam",
           "getpwuid", "setgrent", "setpwent"

       Fetching network info
           "endprotoent", "endservent", "gethostbyaddr", "gethostbyname",
           "gethostent", "getnetbyaddr", "getnetbyname", "getnetent",
           "getprotobyname", "getprotobynumber", "getprotoent",
           "getservbyname", "getservbyport", "getservent", "sethostent",
           "setnetent", "setprotoent", "setservent"

       Time-related functions
           "gmtime", "localtime", "time", "times"

       Non-function keywords
           "and", "AUTOLOAD", "BEGIN", "CHECK", "cmp", "CORE", "__DATA__",
           "default", "DESTROY", "else", "elseif", "elsif", "END", "__END__",
           "eq", "for", "foreach", "ge", "given", "gt", "if", "INIT", "le",
           "lt", "ne", "not", "or", "UNITCHECK", "unless", "until", "when",
           "while", "x", "xor"

   Portability
       Perl was born in Unix and can therefore access all common Unix system
       calls.  In non-Unix environments, the functionality of some Unix system
       calls may not be available or details of the available functionality
       may differ slightly.  The Perl functions affected by this are:

       "-X", "binmode", "chmod", "chown", "chroot", "crypt", "dbmclose",
       "dbmopen", "dump", "endgrent", "endhostent", "endnetent",
       "endprotoent", "endpwent", "endservent", "exec", "fcntl", "flock",
       "fork", "getgrent", "getgrgid", "gethostbyname", "gethostent",
       "getlogin", "getnetbyaddr", "getnetbyname", "getnetent", "getppid",
       "getpgrp", "getpriority", "getprotobynumber", "getprotoent",
       "getpwent", "getpwnam", "getpwuid", "getservbyport", "getservent",
       "getsockopt", "glob", "ioctl", "kill", "link", "lstat", "msgctl",
       "msgget", "msgrcv", "msgsnd", "open", "pipe", "readlink", "rename",
       "select", "semctl", "semget", "semop", "setgrent", "sethostent",
       "setnetent", "setpgrp", "setpriority", "setprotoent", "setpwent",
       "setservent", "setsockopt", "shmctl", "shmget", "shmread", "shmwrite",
       "socket", "socketpair", "stat", "symlink", "syscall", "sysopen",
       "system", "times", "truncate", "umask", "unlink", "utime", "wait",
       "waitpid"

       For more information about the portability of these functions, see
       perlport and other available platform-specific documentation.

   Alphabetical Listing of Perl Functions
       -X FILEHANDLE
       -X EXPR
       -X DIRHANDLE
       -X  A file test, where X is one of the letters listed below.  This
           unary operator takes one argument, either a filename, a filehandle,
           or a dirhandle, and tests the associated file to see if something
           is true about it.  If the argument is omitted, tests $_, except for
           "-t", which tests STDIN.  Unless otherwise documented, it returns 1
           for true and '' for false.  If the file doesn't exist or can't be
           examined, it returns "undef" and sets $! (errno).  With the
           exception of the "-l" test they all follow symbolic links because
           they use "stat()" and not "lstat()" (so dangling symlinks can't be
           examined and will therefore report failure).

           Despite the funny names, precedence is the same as any other named
           unary operator.  The operator may be any of:

               -r  File is readable by effective uid/gid.
               -w  File is writable by effective uid/gid.
               -x  File is executable by effective uid/gid.
               -o  File is owned by effective uid.

               -R  File is readable by real uid/gid.
               -W  File is writable by real uid/gid.
               -X  File is executable by real uid/gid.
               -O  File is owned by real uid.

               -e  File exists.
               -z  File has zero size (is empty).
               -s  File has nonzero size (returns size in bytes).

               -f  File is a plain file.
               -d  File is a directory.
               -l  File is a symbolic link (false if symlinks aren't
                   supported by the file system).
               -p  File is a named pipe (FIFO), or Filehandle is a pipe.
               -S  File is a socket.
               -b  File is a block special file.
               -c  File is a character special file.
               -t  Filehandle is opened to a tty.

               -u  File has setuid bit set.
               -g  File has setgid bit set.
               -k  File has sticky bit set.

               -T  File is an ASCII or UTF-8 text file (heuristic guess).
               -B  File is a "binary" file (opposite of -T).

               -M  Script start time minus file modification time, in days.
               -A  Same for access time.
               -C  Same for inode change time (Unix, may differ for other
                   platforms)

           Example:

               while (<>) {
                   chomp;
                   next unless -f $_;  # ignore specials
                   #...
               }

           Note that "-s/a/b/" does not do a negated substitution.  Saying
           "-exp($foo)" still works as expected, however: only single letters
           following a minus are interpreted as file tests.

           These operators are exempt from the "looks like a function rule"
           described above.  That is, an opening parenthesis after the
           operator does not affect how much of the following code constitutes
           the argument.  Put the opening parentheses before the operator to
           separate it from code that follows (this applies only to operators
           with higher precedence than unary operators, of course):

               -s($file) + 1024   # probably wrong; same as -s($file + 1024)
               (-s $file) + 1024  # correct

           The interpretation of the file permission operators "-r", "-R",
           "-w", "-W", "-x", and "-X" is by default based solely on the mode
           of the file and the uids and gids of the user.  There may be other
           reasons you can't actually read, write, or execute the file: for
           example network filesystem access controls, ACLs (access control
           lists), read-only filesystems, and unrecognized executable formats.
           Note that the use of these six specific operators to verify if some
           operation is possible is usually a mistake, because it may be open
           to race conditions.

           Also note that, for the superuser on the local filesystems, the
           "-r", "-R", "-w", and "-W" tests always return 1, and "-x" and "-X"
           return 1 if any execute bit is set in the mode.  Scripts run by the
           superuser may thus need to do a "stat" to determine the actual mode
           of the file, or temporarily set their effective uid to something
           else.

           If you are using ACLs, there is a pragma called "filetest" that may
           produce more accurate results than the bare "stat" mode bits.  When
           under "use filetest 'access'", the above-mentioned filetests test
           whether the permission can(not) be granted using the access(2)
           family of system calls.  Also note that the "-x" and "-X" tests may
           under this pragma return true even if there are no execute
           permission bits set (nor any extra execute permission ACLs).  This
           strangeness is due to the underlying system calls' definitions.
           Note also that, due to the implementation of "use filetest
           'access'", the "_" special filehandle won't cache the results of
           the file tests when this pragma is in effect.  Read the
           documentation for the "filetest" pragma for more information.

           The "-T" and "-B" tests work as follows.  The first block or so of
           the file is examined to see if it is valid UTF-8 that includes non-
           ASCII characters.  If so, it's a "-T" file.  Otherwise, that same
           portion of the file is examined for odd characters such as strange
           control codes or characters with the high bit set.  If more than a
           third of the characters are strange, it's a "-B" file; otherwise
           it's a "-T" file.  Also, any file containing a zero byte in the
           examined portion is considered a binary file.  (If executed within
           the scope of a uselocale which includes "LC_CTYPE", odd characters
           are anything that isn't a printable nor space in the current
           locale.)  If "-T" or "-B" is used on a filehandle, the current IO
           buffer is examined rather than the first block.  Both "-T" and "-B"
           return true on an empty file, or a file at EOF when testing a
           filehandle.  Because you have to read a file to do the "-T" test,
           on most occasions you want to use a "-f" against the file first, as
           in "next unless -f $file && -T $file".

           If any of the file tests (or either the "stat" or "lstat" operator)
           is given the special filehandle consisting of a solitary underline,
           then the stat structure of the previous file test (or "stat"
           operator) is used, saving a system call.  (This doesn't work with
           "-t", and you need to remember that "lstat" and "-l" leave values
           in the stat structure for the symbolic link, not the real file.)
           (Also, if the stat buffer was filled by an "lstat" call, "-T" and
           "-B" will reset it with the results of "stat _").  Example:

               print "Can do.\n" if -r $a || -w _ || -x _;

               stat($filename);
               print "Readable\n" if -r _;
               print "Writable\n" if -w _;
               print "Executable\n" if -x _;
               print "Setuid\n" if -u _;
               print "Setgid\n" if -g _;
               print "Sticky\n" if -k _;
               print "Text\n" if -T _;
               print "Binary\n" if -B _;

           As of Perl 5.10.0, as a form of purely syntactic sugar, you can
           stack file test operators, in a way that "-f -w -x $file" is
           equivalent to "-x $file && -w _ && -f _".  (This is only fancy
           syntax: if you use the return value of "-f $file" as an argument to
           another filetest operator, no special magic will happen.)

           Portability issues: "-X" in perlport.

           To avoid confusing would-be users of your code with mysterious
           syntax errors, put something like this at the top of your script:

               use 5.010;  # so filetest ops can stack

       abs VALUE
       abs Returns the absolute value of its argument.  If VALUE is omitted,
           uses $_.

       accept NEWSOCKET,GENERICSOCKET
           Accepts an incoming socket connect, just as accept(2) does.
           Returns the packed address if it succeeded, false otherwise.  See
           the example in "Sockets: Client/Server Communication" in perlipc.

           On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on files, the flag
           will be set for the newly opened file descriptor, as determined by
           the value of $^F.  See "$^F" in perlvar.

       alarm SECONDS
       alarm
           Arranges to have a SIGALRM delivered to this process after the
           specified number of wallclock seconds has elapsed.  If SECONDS is
           not specified, the value stored in $_ is used.  (On some machines,
           unfortunately, the elapsed time may be up to one second less or
           more than you specified because of how seconds are counted, and
           process scheduling may delay the delivery of the signal even
           further.)

           Only one timer may be counting at once.  Each call disables the
           previous timer, and an argument of 0 may be supplied to cancel the
           previous timer without starting a new one.  The returned value is
           the amount of time remaining on the previous timer.

           For delays of finer granularity than one second, the Time::HiRes
           module (from CPAN, and starting from Perl 5.8 part of the standard
           distribution) provides "ualarm".  You may also use Perl's four-
           argument version of "select" leaving the first three arguments
           undefined, or you might be able to use the "syscall" interface to
           access setitimer(2) if your system supports it.  See perlfaq8 for
           details.

           It is usually a mistake to intermix "alarm" and "sleep" calls,
           because "sleep" may be internally implemented on your system with
           "alarm".

           If you want to use "alarm" to time out a system call you need to
           use an "eval"/"die" pair.  You can't rely on the alarm causing the
           system call to fail with $! set to "EINTR" because Perl sets up
           signal handlers to restart system calls on some systems.  Using
           "eval"/"die" always works, modulo the caveats given in "Signals" in
           perlipc.

               eval {
                   local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "alarm\n" }; # NB: \n required
                   alarm $timeout;
                   my $nread = sysread $socket, $buffer, $size;
                   alarm 0;
               };
               if ($@) {
                   die unless $@ eq "alarm\n";   # propagate unexpected errors
                   # timed out
               }
               else {
                   # didn't
               }

           For more information see perlipc.

           Portability issues: "alarm" in perlport.

       atan2 Y,X
           Returns the arctangent of Y/X in the range -PI to PI.

           For the tangent operation, you may use the "Math::Trig::tan"
           function, or use the familiar relation:

               sub tan { sin($_[0]) / cos($_[0])  }

           The return value for "atan2(0,0)" is implementation-defined;
           consult your atan2(3) manpage for more information.

           Portability issues: "atan2" in perlport.

       bind SOCKET,NAME
           Binds a network address to a socket, just as bind(2) does.  Returns
           true if it succeeded, false otherwise.  NAME should be a packed
           address of the appropriate type for the socket.  See the examples
           in "Sockets: Client/Server Communication" in perlipc.

       binmode FILEHANDLE, LAYER
       binmode FILEHANDLE
           Arranges for FILEHANDLE to be read or written in "binary" or "text"
           mode on systems where the run-time libraries distinguish between
           binary and text files.  If FILEHANDLE is an expression, the value
           is taken as the name of the filehandle.  Returns true on success,
           otherwise it returns "undef" and sets $! (errno).

           On some systems (in general, DOS- and Windows-based systems)
           "binmode" is necessary when you're not working with a text file.
           For the sake of portability it is a good idea always to use it when
           appropriate, and never to use it when it isn't appropriate.  Also,
           people can set their I/O to be by default UTF8-encoded Unicode, not
           bytes.

           In other words: regardless of platform, use "binmode" on binary
           data, like images, for example.

           If LAYER is present it is a single string, but may contain multiple
           directives.  The directives alter the behaviour of the filehandle.
           When LAYER is present, using binmode on a text file makes sense.

           If LAYER is omitted or specified as ":raw" the filehandle is made
           suitable for passing binary data.  This includes turning off
           possible CRLF translation and marking it as bytes (as opposed to
           Unicode characters).  Note that, despite what may be implied in
           "Programming Perl" (the Camel, 3rd edition) or elsewhere, ":raw" is
           not simply the inverse of ":crlf".  Other layers that would affect
           the binary nature of the stream are also disabled.  See PerlIO,
           perlrun, and the discussion about the PERLIO environment variable.

           The ":bytes", ":crlf", ":utf8", and any other directives of the
           form ":...", are called I/O layers.  The open pragma can be used to
           establish default I/O layers.

           The LAYER parameter of the "binmode" function is described as
           "DISCIPLINE" in "Programming Perl, 3rd Edition".  However, since
           the publishing of this book, by many known as "Camel III", the
           consensus of the naming of this functionality has moved from
           "discipline" to "layer".  All documentation of this version of Perl
           therefore refers to "layers" rather than to "disciplines".  Now
           back to the regularly scheduled documentation...

           To mark FILEHANDLE as UTF-8, use ":utf8" or ":encoding(UTF-8)".
           ":utf8" just marks the data as UTF-8 without further checking,
           while ":encoding(UTF-8)" checks the data for actually being valid
           UTF-8.  More details can be found in PerlIO::encoding.

           In general, "binmode" should be called after "open" but before any
           I/O is done on the filehandle.  Calling "binmode" normally flushes
           any pending buffered output data (and perhaps pending input data)
           on the handle.  An exception to this is the ":encoding" layer that
           changes the default character encoding of the handle.  The
           ":encoding" layer sometimes needs to be called in mid-stream, and
           it doesn't flush the stream.  ":encoding" also implicitly pushes on
           top of itself the ":utf8" layer because internally Perl operates on
           UTF8-encoded Unicode characters.

           The operating system, device drivers, C libraries, and Perl run-
           time system all conspire to let the programmer treat a single
           character ("\n") as the line terminator, irrespective of external
           representation.  On many operating systems, the native text file
           representation matches the internal representation, but on some
           platforms the external representation of "\n" is made up of more
           than one character.

           All variants of Unix, Mac OS (old and new), and Stream_LF files on
           VMS use a single character to end each line in the external
           representation of text (even though that single character is
           CARRIAGE RETURN on old, pre-Darwin flavors of Mac OS, and is LINE
           FEED on Unix and most VMS files).  In other systems like OS/2, DOS,
           and the various flavors of MS-Windows, your program sees a "\n" as
           a simple "\cJ", but what's stored in text files are the two
           characters "\cM\cJ".  That means that if you don't use "binmode" on
           these systems, "\cM\cJ" sequences on disk will be converted to "\n"
           on input, and any "\n" in your program will be converted back to
           "\cM\cJ" on output.  This is what you want for text files, but it
           can be disastrous for binary files.

           Another consequence of using "binmode" (on some systems) is that
           special end-of-file markers will be seen as part of the data
           stream.  For systems from the Microsoft family this means that, if
           your binary data contain "\cZ", the I/O subsystem will regard it as
           the end of the file, unless you use "binmode".

           "binmode" is important not only for "readline" and "print"
           operations, but also when using "read", "seek", "sysread",
           "syswrite" and "tell" (see perlport for more details).  See the $/
           and "$\" variables in perlvar for how to manually set your input
           and output line-termination sequences.

           Portability issues: "binmode" in perlport.

       bless REF,CLASSNAME
       bless REF
           This function tells the thingy referenced by REF that it is now an
           object in the CLASSNAME package.  If CLASSNAME is an empty string,
           it is interpreted as referring to the "main" package.  If CLASSNAME
           is omitted, the current package is used.  Because a "bless" is
           often the last thing in a constructor, it returns the reference for
           convenience.  Always use the two-argument version if a derived
           class might inherit the method doing the blessing.  See perlobj for
           more about the blessing (and blessings) of objects.

           Consider always blessing objects in CLASSNAMEs that are mixed case.
           Namespaces with all lowercase names are considered reserved for
           Perl pragmas.  Builtin types have all uppercase names.  To prevent
           confusion, you may wish to avoid such package names as well.  It is
           advised to avoid the class name 0, because much code erroneously
           uses the result of "ref" as a truth value.

           See "Perl Modules" in perlmod.

       break
           Break out of a "given" block.

           "break" is available only if the "switch" feature is enabled or if
           it is prefixed with "CORE::". The "switch" feature is enabled
           automatically with a "use v5.10" (or higher) declaration in the
           current scope.

       caller EXPR
       caller
           Returns the context of the current pure perl subroutine call.  In
           scalar context, returns the caller's package name if there is a
           caller (that is, if we're in a subroutine or "eval" or "require")
           and the undefined value otherwise.  caller never returns XS subs
           and they are skipped.  The next pure perl sub will appear instead
           of the XS sub in caller's return values.  In list context, caller
           returns

                  # 0         1          2
               my ($package, $filename, $line) = caller;

           With EXPR, it returns some extra information that the debugger uses
           to print a stack trace.  The value of EXPR indicates how many call
           frames to go back before the current one.

               #  0         1          2      3            4
            my ($package, $filename, $line, $subroutine, $hasargs,

               #  5          6          7            8       9         10
               $wantarray, $evaltext, $is_require, $hints, $bitmask, $hinthash)
             = caller($i);

           Here, $subroutine is the function that the caller called (rather
           than the function containing the caller).  Note that $subroutine
           may be "(eval)" if the frame is not a subroutine call, but an
           "eval".  In such a case additional elements $evaltext and
           $is_require are set: $is_require is true if the frame is created by
           a "require" or "use" statement, $evaltext contains the text of the
           "eval EXPR" statement.  In particular, for an "eval BLOCK"
           statement, $subroutine is "(eval)", but $evaltext is undefined.
           (Note also that each "use" statement creates a "require" frame
           inside an "eval EXPR" frame.)  $subroutine may also be "(unknown)"
           if this particular subroutine happens to have been deleted from the
           symbol table.  $hasargs is true if a new instance of @_ was set up
           for the frame.  $hints and $bitmask contain pragmatic hints that
           the caller was compiled with.  $hints corresponds to $^H, and
           $bitmask corresponds to "${^WARNING_BITS}".  The $hints and
           $bitmask values are subject to change between versions of Perl, and
           are not meant for external use.

           $hinthash is a reference to a hash containing the value of "%^H"
           when the caller was compiled, or "undef" if "%^H" was empty.  Do
           not modify the values of this hash, as they are the actual values
           stored in the optree.

           Furthermore, when called from within the DB package in list
           context, and with an argument, caller returns more detailed
           information: it sets the list variable @DB::args to be the
           arguments with which the subroutine was invoked.

           Be aware that the optimizer might have optimized call frames away
           before "caller" had a chance to get the information.  That means
           that caller(N) might not return information about the call frame
           you expect it to, for "N > 1".  In particular, @DB::args might have
           information from the previous time "caller" was called.

           Be aware that setting @DB::args is best effort, intended for
           debugging or generating backtraces, and should not be relied upon.
           In particular, as @_ contains aliases to the caller's arguments,
           Perl does not take a copy of @_, so @DB::args will contain
           modifications the subroutine makes to @_ or its contents, not the
           original values at call time.  @DB::args, like @_, does not hold
           explicit references to its elements, so under certain cases its
           elements may have become freed and reallocated for other variables
           or temporary values.  Finally, a side effect of the current
           implementation is that the effects of "shift @_" can normally be
           undone (but not "pop @_" or other splicing, and not if a reference
           to @_ has been taken, and subject to the caveat about reallocated
           elements), so @DB::args is actually a hybrid of the current state
           and initial state of @_.  Buyer beware.

       chdir EXPR
       chdir FILEHANDLE
       chdir DIRHANDLE
       chdir
           Changes the working directory to EXPR, if possible.  If EXPR is
           omitted, changes to the directory specified by $ENV{HOME}, if set;
           if not, changes to the directory specified by $ENV{LOGDIR}.  (Under
           VMS, the variable $ENV{'SYS$LOGIN'} is also checked, and used if it
           is set.)  If neither is set, "chdir" does nothing and fails.  It
           returns true on success, false otherwise.  See the example under
           "die".

           On systems that support fchdir(2), you may pass a filehandle or
           directory handle as the argument.  On systems that don't support
           fchdir(2), passing handles raises an exception.

       chmod LIST
           Changes the permissions of a list of files.  The first element of
           the list must be the numeric mode, which should probably be an
           octal number, and which definitely should not be a string of octal
           digits: 0644 is okay, but "0644" is not.  Returns the number of
           files successfully changed.  See also "oct" if all you have is a
           string.

               my $cnt = chmod 0755, "foo", "bar";
               chmod 0755, @executables;
               my $mode = "0644"; chmod $mode, "foo";      # !!! sets mode to
                                                           # --w----r-T
               my $mode = "0644"; chmod oct($mode), "foo"; # this is better
               my $mode = 0644;   chmod $mode, "foo";      # this is best

           On systems that support fchmod(2), you may pass filehandles among
           the files.  On systems that don't support fchmod(2), passing
           filehandles raises an exception.  Filehandles must be passed as
           globs or glob references to be recognized; barewords are considered
           filenames.

               open(my $fh, "<", "foo");
               my $perm = (stat $fh)[2] & 07777;
               chmod($perm | 0600, $fh);

           You can also import the symbolic "S_I*" constants from the "Fcntl"
           module:

               use Fcntl qw( :mode );
               chmod S_IRWXU|S_IRGRP|S_IXGRP|S_IROTH|S_IXOTH, @executables;
               # Identical to the chmod 0755 of the example above.

           Portability issues: "chmod" in perlport.

       chomp VARIABLE
       chomp( LIST )
       chomp
           This safer version of "chop" removes any trailing string that
           corresponds to the current value of $/ (also known as
           $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR in the "English" module).  It returns the
           total number of characters removed from all its arguments.  It's
           often used to remove the newline from the end of an input record
           when you're worried that the final record may be missing its
           newline.  When in paragraph mode ("$/ = ''"), it removes all
           trailing newlines from the string.  When in slurp mode ("$/ =
           undef") or fixed-length record mode ($/ is a reference to an
           integer or the like; see perlvar), "chomp" won't remove anything.
           If VARIABLE is omitted, it chomps $_.  Example:

               while (<>) {
                   chomp;  # avoid \n on last field
                   my @array = split(/:/);
                   # ...
               }

           If VARIABLE is a hash, it chomps the hash's values, but not its
           keys, resetting the "each" iterator in the process.

           You can actually chomp anything that's an lvalue, including an
           assignment:

               chomp(my $cwd = `pwd`);
               chomp(my $answer = <STDIN>);

           If you chomp a list, each element is chomped, and the total number
           of characters removed is returned.

           Note that parentheses are necessary when you're chomping anything
           that is not a simple variable.  This is because "chomp $cwd =
           `pwd`;" is interpreted as "(chomp $cwd) = `pwd`;", rather than as
           "chomp( $cwd = `pwd` )" which you might expect.  Similarly, "chomp
           $a, $b" is interpreted as "chomp($a), $b" rather than as "chomp($a,
           $b)".

       chop VARIABLE
       chop( LIST )
       chop
           Chops off the last character of a string and returns the character
           chopped.  It is much more efficient than "s/.$//s" because it
           neither scans nor copies the string.  If VARIABLE is omitted, chops
           $_.  If VARIABLE is a hash, it chops the hash's values, but not its
           keys, resetting the "each" iterator in the process.

           You can actually chop anything that's an lvalue, including an
           assignment.

           If you chop a list, each element is chopped.  Only the value of the
           last "chop" is returned.

           Note that "chop" returns the last character.  To return all but the
           last character, use "substr($string, 0, -1)".

           See also "chomp".

       chown LIST
           Changes the owner (and group) of a list of files.  The first two
           elements of the list must be the numeric uid and gid, in that
           order.  A value of -1 in either position is interpreted by most
           systems to leave that value unchanged.  Returns the number of files
           successfully changed.

               my $cnt = chown $uid, $gid, 'foo', 'bar';
               chown $uid, $gid, @filenames;

           On systems that support fchown(2), you may pass filehandles among
           the files.  On systems that don't support fchown(2), passing
           filehandles raises an exception.  Filehandles must be passed as
           globs or glob references to be recognized; barewords are considered
           filenames.

           Here's an example that looks up nonnumeric uids in the passwd file:

               print "User: ";
               chomp(my $user = <STDIN>);
               print "Files: ";
               chomp(my $pattern = <STDIN>);

               my ($login,$pass,$uid,$gid) = getpwnam($user)
                   or die "$user not in passwd file";

               my @ary = glob($pattern);  # expand filenames
               chown $uid, $gid, @ary;

           On most systems, you are not allowed to change the ownership of the
           file unless you're the superuser, although you should be able to
           change the group to any of your secondary groups.  On insecure
           systems, these restrictions may be relaxed, but this is not a
           portable assumption.  On POSIX systems, you can detect this
           condition this way:

               use POSIX qw(sysconf _PC_CHOWN_RESTRICTED);
               my $can_chown_giveaway = ! sysconf(_PC_CHOWN_RESTRICTED);

           Portability issues: "chown" in perlport.

       chr NUMBER
       chr Returns the character represented by that NUMBER in the character
           set.  For example, "chr(65)" is "A" in either ASCII or Unicode, and
           chr(0x263a) is a Unicode smiley face.

           Negative values give the Unicode replacement character
           (chr(0xfffd)), except under the bytes pragma, where the low eight
           bits of the value (truncated to an integer) are used.

           If NUMBER is omitted, uses $_.

           For the reverse, use "ord".

           Note that characters from 128 to 255 (inclusive) are by default
           internally not encoded as UTF-8 for backward compatibility reasons.

           See perlunicode for more about Unicode.

       chroot FILENAME
       chroot
           This function works like the system call by the same name: it makes
           the named directory the new root directory for all further
           pathnames that begin with a "/" by your process and all its
           children.  (It doesn't change your current working directory, which
           is unaffected.)  For security reasons, this call is restricted to
           the superuser.  If FILENAME is omitted, does a "chroot" to $_.

           NOTE:  It is good security practice to do "chdir("/")" ("chdir" to
           the root directory) immediately after a "chroot".

           Portability issues: "chroot" in perlport.

       close FILEHANDLE
       close
           Closes the file or pipe associated with the filehandle, flushes the
           IO buffers, and closes the system file descriptor.  Returns true if
           those operations succeed and if no error was reported by any PerlIO
           layer.  Closes the currently selected filehandle if the argument is
           omitted.

           You don't have to close FILEHANDLE if you are immediately going to
           do another "open" on it, because "open" closes it for you.  (See
           "open".) However, an explicit "close" on an input file resets the
           line counter ($.), while the implicit close done by "open" does
           not.

           If the filehandle came from a piped open, "close" returns false if
           one of the other syscalls involved fails or if its program exits
           with non-zero status.  If the only problem was that the program
           exited non-zero, $! will be set to 0.  Closing a pipe also waits
           for the process executing on the pipe to exit--in case you wish to
           look at the output of the pipe afterwards--and implicitly puts the
           exit status value of that command into $? and
           "${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}".

           If there are multiple threads running, "close" on a filehandle from
           a piped open returns true without waiting for the child process to
           terminate, if the filehandle is still open in another thread.

           Closing the read end of a pipe before the process writing to it at
           the other end is done writing results in the writer receiving a
           SIGPIPE.  If the other end can't handle that, be sure to read all
           the data before closing the pipe.

           Example:

               open(OUTPUT, '|sort >foo')  # pipe to sort
                   or die "Can't start sort: $!";
               #...                        # print stuff to output
               close OUTPUT                # wait for sort to finish
                   or warn $! ? "Error closing sort pipe: $!"
                              : "Exit status $? from sort";
               open(INPUT, 'foo')          # get sort's results
                   or die "Can't open 'foo' for input: $!";

           FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value can be used as an
           indirect filehandle, usually the real filehandle name or an
           autovivified handle.

       closedir DIRHANDLE
           Closes a directory opened by "opendir" and returns the success of
           that system call.

       connect SOCKET,NAME
           Attempts to connect to a remote socket, just like connect(2).
           Returns true if it succeeded, false otherwise.  NAME should be a
           packed address of the appropriate type for the socket.  See the
           examples in "Sockets: Client/Server Communication" in perlipc.

       continue BLOCK
       continue
           When followed by a BLOCK, "continue" is actually a flow control
           statement rather than a function.  If there is a "continue" BLOCK
           attached to a BLOCK (typically in a "while" or "foreach"), it is
           always executed just before the conditional is about to be
           evaluated again, just like the third part of a "for" loop in C.
           Thus it can be used to increment a loop variable, even when the
           loop has been continued via the "next" statement (which is similar
           to the C "continue" statement).

           "last", "next", or "redo" may appear within a "continue" block;
           "last" and "redo" behave as if they had been executed within the
           main block.  So will "next", but since it will execute a "continue"
           block, it may be more entertaining.

               while (EXPR) {
                   ### redo always comes here
                   do_something;
               } continue {
                   ### next always comes here
                   do_something_else;
                   # then back the top to re-check EXPR
               }
               ### last always comes here

           Omitting the "continue" section is equivalent to using an empty
           one, logically enough, so "next" goes directly back to check the
           condition at the top of the loop.

           When there is no BLOCK, "continue" is a function that falls through
           the current "when" or "default" block instead of iterating a
           dynamically enclosing "foreach" or exiting a lexically enclosing
           "given".  In Perl 5.14 and earlier, this form of "continue" was
           only available when the "switch" feature was enabled.  See feature
           and "Switch Statements" in perlsyn for more information.

       cos EXPR
       cos Returns the cosine of EXPR (expressed in radians).  If EXPR is
           omitted, takes the cosine of $_.

           For the inverse cosine operation, you may use the
           "Math::Trig::acos" function, or use this relation:

               sub acos { atan2( sqrt(1 - $_[0] * $_[0]), $_[0] ) }

       crypt PLAINTEXT,SALT
           Creates a digest string exactly like the crypt(3) function in the C
           library (assuming that you actually have a version there that has
           not been extirpated as a potential munition).

           "crypt" is a one-way hash function.  The PLAINTEXT and SALT are
           turned into a short string, called a digest, which is returned.
           The same PLAINTEXT and SALT will always return the same string, but
           there is no (known) way to get the original PLAINTEXT from the
           hash.  Small changes in the PLAINTEXT or SALT will result in large
           changes in the digest.

           There is no decrypt function.  This function isn't all that useful
           for cryptography (for that, look for Crypt modules on your nearby
           CPAN mirror) and the name "crypt" is a bit of a misnomer.  Instead
           it is primarily used to check if two pieces of text are the same
           without having to transmit or store the text itself.  An example is
           checking if a correct password is given.  The digest of the
           password is stored, not the password itself.  The user types in a
           password that is "crypt"'d with the same salt as the stored digest.
           If the two digests match, the password is correct.

           When verifying an existing digest string you should use the digest
           as the salt (like "crypt($plain, $digest) eq $digest").  The SALT
           used to create the digest is visible as part of the digest.  This
           ensures "crypt" will hash the new string with the same salt as the
           digest.  This allows your code to work with the standard "crypt"
           and with more exotic implementations.  In other words, assume
           nothing about the returned string itself nor about how many bytes
           of SALT may matter.

           Traditionally the result is a string of 13 bytes: two first bytes
           of the salt, followed by 11 bytes from the set "[./0-9A-Za-z]", and
           only the first eight bytes of PLAINTEXT mattered.  But alternative
           hashing schemes (like MD5), higher level security schemes (like
           C2), and implementations on non-Unix platforms may produce
           different strings.

           When choosing a new salt create a random two character string whose
           characters come from the set "[./0-9A-Za-z]" (like "join '', ('.',
           '/', 0..9, 'A'..'Z', 'a'..'z')[rand 64, rand 64]").  This set of
           characters is just a recommendation; the characters allowed in the
           salt depend solely on your system's crypt library, and Perl can't
           restrict what salts "crypt" accepts.

           Here's an example that makes sure that whoever runs this program
           knows their password:

               my $pwd = (getpwuid($<))[1];

               system "stty -echo";
               print "Password: ";
               chomp(my $word = <STDIN>);
               print "\n";
               system "stty echo";

               if (crypt($word, $pwd) ne $pwd) {
                   die "Sorry...\n";
               } else {
                   print "ok\n";
               }

           Of course, typing in your own password to whoever asks you for it
           is unwise.

           The "crypt" function is unsuitable for hashing large quantities of
           data, not least of all because you can't get the information back.
           Look at the Digest module for more robust algorithms.

           If using "crypt" on a Unicode string (which potentially has
           characters with codepoints above 255), Perl tries to make sense of
           the situation by trying to downgrade (a copy of) the string back to
           an eight-bit byte string before calling "crypt" (on that copy).  If
           that works, good.  If not, "crypt" dies with "Wide character in
           crypt".

           Portability issues: "crypt" in perlport.

       dbmclose HASH
           [This function has been largely superseded by the "untie"
           function.]

           Breaks the binding between a DBM file and a hash.

           Portability issues: "dbmclose" in perlport.

       dbmopen HASH,DBNAME,MASK
           [This function has been largely superseded by the "tie" function.]

           This binds a dbm(3), ndbm(3), sdbm(3), gdbm(3), or Berkeley DB file
           to a hash.  HASH is the name of the hash.  (Unlike normal "open",
           the first argument is not a filehandle, even though it looks like
           one).  DBNAME is the name of the database (without the .dir or .pag
           extension if any).  If the database does not exist, it is created
           with protection specified by MASK (as modified by the "umask").  To
           prevent creation of the database if it doesn't exist, you may
           specify a MODE of 0, and the function will return a false value if
           it can't find an existing database.  If your system supports only
           the older DBM functions, you may make only one "dbmopen" call in
           your program.  In older versions of Perl, if your system had
           neither DBM nor ndbm, calling "dbmopen" produced a fatal error; it
           now falls back to sdbm(3).

           If you don't have write access to the DBM file, you can only read
           hash variables, not set them.  If you want to test whether you can
           write, either use file tests or try setting a dummy hash entry
           inside an "eval" to trap the error.

           Note that functions such as "keys" and "values" may return huge
           lists when used on large DBM files.  You may prefer to use the
           "each" function to iterate over large DBM files.  Example:

               # print out history file offsets
               dbmopen(%HIST,'/usr/lib/news/history',0666);
               while (($key,$val) = each %HIST) {
                   print $key, ' = ', unpack('L',$val), "\n";
               }
               dbmclose(%HIST);

           See also AnyDBM_File for a more general description of the pros and
           cons of the various dbm approaches, as well as DB_File for a
           particularly rich implementation.

           You can control which DBM library you use by loading that library
           before you call "dbmopen":

               use DB_File;
               dbmopen(%NS_Hist, "$ENV{HOME}/.netscape/history.db")
                   or die "Can't open netscape history file: $!";

           Portability issues: "dbmopen" in perlport.

       defined EXPR
       defined
           Returns a Boolean value telling whether EXPR has a value other than
           the undefined value "undef".  If EXPR is not present, $_ is
           checked.

           Many operations return "undef" to indicate failure, end of file,
           system error, uninitialized variable, and other exceptional
           conditions.  This function allows you to distinguish "undef" from
           other values.  (A simple Boolean test will not distinguish among
           "undef", zero, the empty string, and "0", which are all equally
           false.)  Note that since "undef" is a valid scalar, its presence
           doesn't necessarily indicate an exceptional condition: "pop"
           returns "undef" when its argument is an empty array, or when the
           element to return happens to be "undef".

           You may also use "defined(&func)" to check whether subroutine
           "func" has ever been defined.  The return value is unaffected by
           any forward declarations of "func".  A subroutine that is not
           defined may still be callable: its package may have an "AUTOLOAD"
           method that makes it spring into existence the first time that it
           is called; see perlsub.

           Use of "defined" on aggregates (hashes and arrays) is no longer
           supported. It used to report whether memory for that aggregate had
           ever been allocated.  You should instead use a simple test for
           size:

               if (@an_array) { print "has array elements\n" }
               if (%a_hash)   { print "has hash members\n"   }

           When used on a hash element, it tells you whether the value is
           defined, not whether the key exists in the hash.  Use "exists" for
           the latter purpose.

           Examples:

               print if defined $switch{D};
               print "$val\n" while defined($val = pop(@ary));
               die "Can't readlink $sym: $!"
                   unless defined($value = readlink $sym);
               sub foo { defined &$bar ? $bar->(@_) : die "No bar"; }
               $debugging = 0 unless defined $debugging;

           Note:  Many folks tend to overuse "defined" and are then surprised
           to discover that the number 0 and "" (the zero-length string) are,
           in fact, defined values.  For example, if you say

               "ab" =~ /a(.*)b/;

           The pattern match succeeds and $1 is defined, although it matched
           "nothing".  It didn't really fail to match anything.  Rather, it
           matched something that happened to be zero characters long.  This
           is all very above-board and honest.  When a function returns an
           undefined value, it's an admission that it couldn't give you an
           honest answer.  So you should use "defined" only when questioning
           the integrity of what you're trying to do.  At other times, a
           simple comparison to 0 or "" is what you want.

           See also "undef", "exists", "ref".

       delete EXPR
           Given an expression that specifies an element or slice of a hash,
           "delete" deletes the specified elements from that hash so that
           "exists" on that element no longer returns true.  Setting a hash
           element to the undefined value does not remove its key, but
           deleting it does; see "exists".

           In list context, usually returns the value or values deleted, or
           the last such element in scalar context.  The return list's length
           corresponds to that of the argument list: deleting non-existent
           elements returns the undefined value in their corresponding
           positions. When a key/value hash slice is passed to "delete", the
           return value is a list of key/value pairs (two elements for each
           item deleted from the hash).

           "delete" may also be used on arrays and array slices, but its
           behavior is less straightforward.  Although "exists" will return
           false for deleted entries, deleting array elements never changes
           indices of existing values; use "shift" or "splice" for that.
           However, if any deleted elements fall at the end of an array, the
           array's size shrinks to the position of the highest element that
           still tests true for "exists", or to 0 if none do.  In other words,
           an array won't have trailing nonexistent elements after a delete.

           WARNING: Calling "delete" on array values is strongly discouraged.
           The notion of deleting or checking the existence of Perl array
           elements is not conceptually coherent, and can lead to surprising
           behavior.

           Deleting from %ENV modifies the environment.  Deleting from a hash
           tied to a DBM file deletes the entry from the DBM file.  Deleting
           from a "tied" hash or array may not necessarily return anything; it
           depends on the implementation of the "tied" package's DELETE
           method, which may do whatever it pleases.

           The "delete local EXPR" construct localizes the deletion to the
           current block at run time.  Until the block exits, elements locally
           deleted temporarily no longer exist.  See "Localized deletion of
           elements of composite types" in perlsub.

               my %hash = (foo => 11, bar => 22, baz => 33);
               my $scalar = delete $hash{foo};         # $scalar is 11
               $scalar = delete @hash{qw(foo bar)}; # $scalar is 22
               my @array  = delete @hash{qw(foo baz)}; # @array  is (undef,33)

           The following (inefficiently) deletes all the values of %HASH and
           @ARRAY:

               foreach my $key (keys %HASH) {
                   delete $HASH{$key};
               }

               foreach my $index (0 .. $#ARRAY) {
                   delete $ARRAY[$index];
               }

           And so do these:

               delete @HASH{keys %HASH};

               delete @ARRAY[0 .. $#ARRAY];

           But both are slower than assigning the empty list or undefining
           %HASH or @ARRAY, which is the customary way to empty out an
           aggregate:

               %HASH = ();     # completely empty %HASH
               undef %HASH;    # forget %HASH ever existed

               @ARRAY = ();    # completely empty @ARRAY
               undef @ARRAY;   # forget @ARRAY ever existed

           The EXPR can be arbitrarily complicated provided its final
           operation is an element or slice of an aggregate:

               delete $ref->[$x][$y]{$key};
               delete @{$ref->[$x][$y]}{$key1, $key2, @morekeys};

               delete $ref->[$x][$y][$index];
               delete @{$ref->[$x][$y]}[$index1, $index2, @moreindices];

       die LIST
           "die" raises an exception.  Inside an "eval" the exception is
           stuffed into $@ and the "eval" is terminated with the undefined
           value.  If the exception is outside of all enclosing "eval"s, then
           the uncaught exception is printed to "STDERR" and perl exits with
           an exit code indicating failure.  If you need to exit the process
           with a specific exit code, see "exit".

           Equivalent examples:

               die "Can't cd to spool: $!\n" unless chdir '/usr/spool/news';
               chdir '/usr/spool/news' or die "Can't cd to spool: $!\n"

           Most of the time, "die" is called with a string to use as the
           exception.  You may either give a single non-reference operand to
           serve as the exception, or a list of two or more items, which will
           be stringified and concatenated to make the exception.

           If the string exception does not end in a newline, the current
           script line number and input line number (if any) and a newline are
           appended to it.  Note that the "input line number" (also known as
           "chunk") is subject to whatever notion of "line" happens to be
           currently in effect, and is also available as the special variable
           $..  See "$/" in perlvar and "$." in perlvar.

           Hint: sometimes appending ", stopped" to your message will cause it
           to make better sense when the string "at foo line 123" is appended.
           Suppose you are running script "canasta".

               die "/etc/games is no good";
               die "/etc/games is no good, stopped";

           produce, respectively

               /etc/games is no good at canasta line 123.
               /etc/games is no good, stopped at canasta line 123.

           If LIST was empty or made an empty string, and $@ already contains
           an exception value (typically from a previous "eval"), then that
           value is reused after appending "\t...propagated".  This is useful
           for propagating exceptions:

               eval { ... };
               die unless $@ =~ /Expected exception/;

           If LIST was empty or made an empty string, and $@ contains an
           object reference that has a "PROPAGATE" method, that method will be
           called with additional file and line number parameters.  The return
           value replaces the value in $@;  i.e., as if "$@ = eval {
           $@->PROPAGATE(__FILE__, __LINE__) };" were called.

           If LIST was empty or made an empty string, and $@ is also empty,
           then the string "Died" is used.

           You can also call "die" with a reference argument, and if this is
           trapped within an "eval", $@ contains that reference.  This permits
           more elaborate exception handling using objects that maintain
           arbitrary state about the exception.  Such a scheme is sometimes
           preferable to matching particular string values of $@ with regular
           expressions.

           Because Perl stringifies uncaught exception messages before
           display, you'll probably want to overload stringification
           operations on exception objects.  See overload for details about
           that.  The stringified message should be non-empty, and should end
           in a newline, in order to fit in with the treatment of string
           exceptions.  Also, because an exception object reference cannot be
           stringified without destroying it, Perl doesn't attempt to append
           location or other information to a reference exception.  If you
           want location information with a complex exception object, you'll
           have to arrange to put the location information into the object
           yourself.

           Because $@ is a global variable, be careful that analyzing an
           exception caught by "eval" doesn't replace the reference in the
           global variable.  It's easiest to make a local copy of the
           reference before any manipulations.  Here's an example:

               use Scalar::Util "blessed";

               eval { ... ; die Some::Module::Exception->new( FOO => "bar" ) };
               if (my $ev_err = $@) {
                   if (blessed($ev_err)
                       && $ev_err->isa("Some::Module::Exception")) {
                       # handle Some::Module::Exception
                   }
                   else {
                       # handle all other possible exceptions
                   }
               }

           If an uncaught exception results in interpreter exit, the exit code
           is determined from the values of $! and $? with this pseudocode:

               exit $! if $!;              # errno
               exit $? >> 8 if $? >> 8;    # child exit status
               exit 255;                   # last resort

           As with "exit", $? is set prior to unwinding the call stack; any
           "DESTROY" or "END" handlers can then alter this value, and thus
           Perl's exit code.

           The intent is to squeeze as much possible information about the
           likely cause into the limited space of the system exit code.
           However, as $! is the value of C's "errno", which can be set by any
           system call, this means that the value of the exit code used by
           "die" can be non-predictable, so should not be relied upon, other
           than to be non-zero.

           You can arrange for a callback to be run just before the "die" does
           its deed, by setting the $SIG{__DIE__} hook.  The associated
           handler is called with the exception as an argument, and can change
           the exception, if it sees fit, by calling "die" again.  See "%SIG"
           in perlvar for details on setting %SIG entries, and "eval" for some
           examples.  Although this feature was to be run only right before
           your program was to exit, this is not currently so: the
           $SIG{__DIE__} hook is currently called even inside "eval"ed
           blocks/strings!  If one wants the hook to do nothing in such
           situations, put

               die @_ if $^S;

           as the first line of the handler (see "$^S" in perlvar).  Because
           this promotes strange action at a distance, this counterintuitive
           behavior may be fixed in a future release.

           See also "exit", "warn", and the Carp module.

       do BLOCK
           Not really a function.  Returns the value of the last command in
           the sequence of commands indicated by BLOCK.  When modified by the
           "while" or "until" loop modifier, executes the BLOCK once before
           testing the loop condition.  (On other statements the loop
           modifiers test the conditional first.)

           "do BLOCK" does not count as a loop, so the loop control statements
           "next", "last", or "redo" cannot be used to leave or restart the
           block.  See perlsyn for alternative strategies.

       do EXPR
           Uses the value of EXPR as a filename and executes the contents of
           the file as a Perl script:

               # load the exact specified file (./ and ../ special-cased)
               do '/foo/stat.pl';
               do './stat.pl';
               do '../foo/stat.pl';

               # search for the named file within @INC
               do 'stat.pl';
               do 'foo/stat.pl';

           "do './stat.pl'" is largely like

               eval `cat stat.pl`;

           except that it's more concise, runs no external processes, and
           keeps track of the current filename for error messages. It also
           differs in that code evaluated with "do FILE" cannot see lexicals
           in the enclosing scope; "eval STRING" does.  It's the same,
           however, in that it does reparse the file every time you call it,
           so you probably don't want to do this inside a loop.

           Using "do" with a relative path (except for ./ and ../), like

               do 'foo/stat.pl';

           will search the @INC directories, and update %INC if the file is
           found.  See "@INC" in perlvar and "%INC" in perlvar for these
           variables. In particular, note that whilst historically @INC
           contained '.' (the current directory) making these two cases
           equivalent, that is no longer necessarily the case, as '.' is not
           included in @INC by default in perl versions 5.26.0 onwards.
           Instead, perl will now warn:

               do "stat.pl" failed, '.' is no longer in @INC;
               did you mean do "./stat.pl"?

           If "do" can read the file but cannot compile it, it returns "undef"
           and sets an error message in $@.  If "do" cannot read the file, it
           returns undef and sets $! to the error.  Always check $@ first, as
           compilation could fail in a way that also sets $!.  If the file is
           successfully compiled, "do" returns the value of the last
           expression evaluated.

           Inclusion of library modules is better done with the "use" and
           "require" operators, which also do automatic error checking and
           raise an exception if there's a problem.

           You might like to use "do" to read in a program configuration file.
           Manual error checking can be done this way:

               # Read in config files: system first, then user.
               # Beware of using relative pathnames here.
               for $file ("/share/prog/defaults.rc",
                          "$ENV{HOME}/.someprogrc")
               {
                   unless ($return = do $file) {
                       warn "couldn't parse $file: $@" if $@;
                       warn "couldn't do $file: $!"    unless defined $return;
                       warn "couldn't run $file"       unless $return;
                   }
               }

       dump LABEL
       dump EXPR
       dump
           This function causes an immediate core dump.  See also the -u
           command-line switch in perlrun, which does the same thing.
           Primarily this is so that you can use the undump program (not
           supplied) to turn your core dump into an executable binary after
           having initialized all your variables at the beginning of the
           program.  When the new binary is executed it will begin by
           executing a "goto LABEL" (with all the restrictions that "goto"
           suffers).  Think of it as a goto with an intervening core dump and
           reincarnation.  If "LABEL" is omitted, restarts the program from
           the top.  The "dump EXPR" form, available starting in Perl 5.18.0,
           allows a name to be computed at run time, being otherwise identical
           to "dump LABEL".

           WARNING: Any files opened at the time of the dump will not be open
           any more when the program is reincarnated, with possible resulting
           confusion by Perl.

           This function is now largely obsolete, mostly because it's very
           hard to convert a core file into an executable.  As of Perl 5.30,
           it must be invoked as "CORE::dump()".

           Unlike most named operators, this has the same precedence as
           assignment.  It is also exempt from the looks-like-a-function rule,
           so "dump ("foo")."bar"" will cause "bar" to be part of the argument
           to "dump".

           Portability issues: "dump" in perlport.

       each HASH
       each ARRAY
           When called on a hash in list context, returns a 2-element list
           consisting of the key and value for the next element of a hash.  In
           Perl 5.12 and later only, it will also return the index and value
           for the next element of an array so that you can iterate over it;
           older Perls consider this a syntax error.  When called in scalar
           context, returns only the key (not the value) in a hash, or the
           index in an array.

           Hash entries are returned in an apparently random order.  The
           actual random order is specific to a given hash; the exact same
           series of operations on two hashes may result in a different order
           for each hash.  Any insertion into the hash may change the order,
           as will any deletion, with the exception that the most recent key
           returned by "each" or "keys" may be deleted without changing the
           order.  So long as a given hash is unmodified you may rely on
           "keys", "values" and "each" to repeatedly return the same order as
           each other.  See "Algorithmic Complexity Attacks" in perlsec for
           details on why hash order is randomized.  Aside from the guarantees
           provided here the exact details of Perl's hash algorithm and the
           hash traversal order are subject to change in any release of Perl.

           After "each" has returned all entries from the hash or array, the
           next call to "each" returns the empty list in list context and
           "undef" in scalar context; the next call following that one
           restarts iteration.  Each hash or array has its own internal
           iterator, accessed by "each", "keys", and "values".  The iterator
           is implicitly reset when "each" has reached the end as just
           described; it can be explicitly reset by calling "keys" or "values"
           on the hash or array, or by referencing the hash (but not array) in
           list context.  If you add or delete a hash's elements while
           iterating over it, the effect on the iterator is unspecified; for
           example, entries may be skipped or duplicated--so don't do that.
           Exception: It is always safe to delete the item most recently
           returned by "each", so the following code works properly:

               while (my ($key, $value) = each %hash) {
                   print $key, "\n";
                   delete $hash{$key};   # This is safe
               }

           Tied hashes may have a different ordering behaviour to perl's hash
           implementation.

           The iterator used by "each" is attached to the hash or array, and
           is shared between all iteration operations applied to the same hash
           or array.  Thus all uses of "each" on a single hash or array
           advance the same iterator location.  All uses of "each" are also
           subject to having the iterator reset by any use of "keys" or
           "values" on the same hash or array, or by the hash (but not array)
           being referenced in list context.  This makes "each"-based loops
           quite fragile: it is easy to arrive at such a loop with the
           iterator already part way through the object, or to accidentally
           clobber the iterator state during execution of the loop body.  It's
           easy enough to explicitly reset the iterator before starting a
           loop, but there is no way to insulate the iterator state used by a
           loop from the iterator state used by anything else that might
           execute during the loop body.  To avoid these problems, use a
           "foreach" loop rather than "while"-"each".

           This prints out your environment like the printenv(1) program, but
           in a different order:

               while (my ($key,$value) = each %ENV) {
                   print "$key=$value\n";
               }

           Starting with Perl 5.14, an experimental feature allowed "each" to
           take a scalar expression. This experiment has been deemed
           unsuccessful, and was removed as of Perl 5.24.

           As of Perl 5.18 you can use a bare "each" in a "while" loop, which
           will set $_ on every iteration.  If either an "each" expression or
           an explicit assignment of an "each" expression to a scalar is used
           as a "while"/"for" condition, then the condition actually tests for
           definedness of the expression's value, not for its regular truth
           value.

               while (each %ENV) {
                   print "$_=$ENV{$_}\n";
               }

           To avoid confusing would-be users of your code who are running
           earlier versions of Perl with mysterious syntax errors, put this
           sort of thing at the top of your file to signal that your code will
           work only on Perls of a recent vintage:

               use 5.012;  # so keys/values/each work on arrays
               use 5.018;  # so each assigns to $_ in a lone while test

           See also "keys", "values", and "sort".

       eof FILEHANDLE
       eof ()
       eof Returns 1 if the next read on FILEHANDLE will return end of file or
           if FILEHANDLE is not open.  FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose
           value gives the real filehandle.  (Note that this function actually
           reads a character and then "ungetc"s it, so isn't useful in an
           interactive context.)  Do not read from a terminal file (or call
           "eof(FILEHANDLE)" on it) after end-of-file is reached.  File types
           such as terminals may lose the end-of-file condition if you do.

           An "eof" without an argument uses the last file read.  Using
           "eof()" with empty parentheses is different.  It refers to the
           pseudo file formed from the files listed on the command line and
           accessed via the "<>" operator.  Since "<>" isn't explicitly
           opened, as a normal filehandle is, an "eof()" before "<>" has been
           used will cause @ARGV to be examined to determine if input is
           available.   Similarly, an "eof()" after "<>" has returned end-of-
           file will assume you are processing another @ARGV list, and if you
           haven't set @ARGV, will read input from "STDIN"; see "I/O
           Operators" in perlop.

           In a "while (<>)" loop, "eof" or "eof(ARGV)" can be used to detect
           the end of each file, whereas "eof()" will detect the end of the
           very last file only.  Examples:

               # reset line numbering on each input file
               while (<>) {
                   next if /^\s*#/;  # skip comments
                   print "$.\t$_";
               } continue {
                   close ARGV if eof;  # Not eof()!
               }

               # insert dashes just before last line of last file
               while (<>) {
                   if (eof()) {  # check for end of last file
                       print "--------------\n";
                   }
                   print;
                   last if eof();     # needed if we're reading from a terminal
               }

           Practical hint: you almost never need to use "eof" in Perl, because
           the input operators typically return "undef" when they run out of
           data or encounter an error.

       eval EXPR
       eval BLOCK
       eval
           "eval" in all its forms is used to execute a little Perl program,
           trapping any errors encountered so they don't crash the calling
           program.

           Plain "eval" with no argument is just "eval EXPR", where the
           expression is understood to be contained in $_.  Thus there are
           only two real "eval" forms; the one with an EXPR is often called
           "string eval".  In a string eval, the value of the expression
           (which is itself determined within scalar context) is first parsed,
           and if there were no errors, executed as a block within the lexical
           context of the current Perl program.  This form is typically used
           to delay parsing and subsequent execution of the text of EXPR until
           run time.  Note that the value is parsed every time the "eval"
           executes.

           The other form is called "block eval".  It is less general than
           string eval, but the code within the BLOCK is parsed only once (at
           the same time the code surrounding the "eval" itself was parsed)
           and executed within the context of the current Perl program.  This
           form is typically used to trap exceptions more efficiently than the
           first, while also providing the benefit of checking the code within
           BLOCK at compile time.  BLOCK is parsed and compiled just once.
           Since errors are trapped, it often is used to check if a given
           feature is available.

           In both forms, the value returned is the value of the last
           expression evaluated inside the mini-program; a return statement
           may also be used, just as with subroutines.  The expression
           providing the return value is evaluated in void, scalar, or list
           context, depending on the context of the "eval" itself.  See
           "wantarray" for more on how the evaluation context can be
           determined.

           If there is a syntax error or runtime error, or a "die" statement
           is executed, "eval" returns "undef" in scalar context, or an empty
           list in list context, and $@ is set to the error message.  (Prior
           to 5.16, a bug caused "undef" to be returned in list context for
           syntax errors, but not for runtime errors.) If there was no error,
           $@ is set to the empty string.  A control flow operator like "last"
           or "goto" can bypass the setting of $@.  Beware that using "eval"
           neither silences Perl from printing warnings to STDERR, nor does it
           stuff the text of warning messages into $@.  To do either of those,
           you have to use the $SIG{__WARN__} facility, or turn off warnings
           inside the BLOCK or EXPR using "nowarnings'all'".  See "warn",
           perlvar, and warnings.

           Note that, because "eval" traps otherwise-fatal errors, it is
           useful for determining whether a particular feature (such as
           "socket" or "symlink") is implemented.  It is also Perl's
           exception-trapping mechanism, where the "die" operator is used to
           raise exceptions.

           Before Perl 5.14, the assignment to $@ occurred before restoration
           of localized variables, which means that for your code to run on
           older versions, a temporary is required if you want to mask some,
           but not all errors:

            # alter $@ on nefarious repugnancy only
            {
               my $e;
               {
                 local $@; # protect existing $@
                 eval { test_repugnancy() };
                 # $@ =~ /nefarious/ and die $@; # Perl 5.14 and higher only
                 $@ =~ /nefarious/ and $e = $@;
               }
               die $e if defined $e
            }

           There are some different considerations for each form:

           String eval
               Since the return value of EXPR is executed as a block within
               the lexical context of the current Perl program, any outer
               lexical variables are visible to it, and any package variable
               settings or subroutine and format definitions remain
               afterwards.

               Under the "unicode_eval" feature
                   If this feature is enabled (which is the default under a
                   "use 5.16" or higher declaration), EXPR is considered to be
                   in the same encoding as the surrounding program.  Thus if
                   "useutf8" is in effect, the string will be treated as being
                   UTF-8 encoded.  Otherwise, the string is considered to be a
                   sequence of independent bytes.  Bytes that correspond to
                   ASCII-range code points will have their normal meanings for
                   operators in the string.  The treatment of the other bytes
                   depends on if the "'unicode_strings"" feature is in effect.

                   In a plain "eval" without an EXPR argument, being in
                   "useutf8" or not is irrelevant; the UTF-8ness of $_ itself
                   determines the behavior.

                   Any "useutf8" or "noutf8" declarations within the string
                   have no effect, and source filters are forbidden.
                   ("unicode_strings", however, can appear within the string.)
                   See also the "evalbytes" operator, which works properly
                   with source filters.

                   Variables defined outside the "eval" and used inside it
                   retain their original UTF-8ness.  Everything inside the
                   string follows the normal rules for a Perl program with the
                   given state of "useutf8".

               Outside the "unicode_eval" feature
                   In this case, the behavior is problematic and is not so
                   easily described.  Here are two bugs that cannot easily be
                   fixed without breaking existing programs:

                   o   It can lose track of whether something should be
                       encoded as UTF-8 or not.

                   o   Source filters activated within "eval" leak out into
                       whichever file scope is currently being compiled.  To
                       give an example with the CPAN module Semi::Semicolons:

                        BEGIN { eval "use Semi::Semicolons; # not filtered" }
                        # filtered here!

                       "evalbytes" fixes that to work the way one would
                       expect:

                        use feature "evalbytes";
                        BEGIN { evalbytes "use Semi::Semicolons; # filtered" }
                        # not filtered

               Problems can arise if the string expands a scalar containing a
               floating point number.  That scalar can expand to letters, such
               as "NaN" or "Infinity"; or, within the scope of a "use locale",
               the decimal point character may be something other than a dot
               (such as a comma).  None of these are likely to parse as you
               are likely expecting.

               You should be especially careful to remember what's being
               looked at when:

                   eval $x;        # CASE 1
                   eval "$x";      # CASE 2

                   eval '$x';      # CASE 3
                   eval { $x };    # CASE 4

                   eval "\$$x++";  # CASE 5
                   $$x++;          # CASE 6

               Cases 1 and 2 above behave identically: they run the code
               contained in the variable $x.  (Although case 2 has misleading
               double quotes making the reader wonder what else might be
               happening (nothing is).)  Cases 3 and 4 likewise behave in the
               same way: they run the code '$x', which does nothing but return
               the value of $x.  (Case 4 is preferred for purely visual
               reasons, but it also has the advantage of compiling at compile-
               time instead of at run-time.)  Case 5 is a place where normally
               you would like to use double quotes, except that in this
               particular situation, you can just use symbolic references
               instead, as in case 6.

               An "eval ''" executed within a subroutine defined in the "DB"
               package doesn't see the usual surrounding lexical scope, but
               rather the scope of the first non-DB piece of code that called
               it.  You don't normally need to worry about this unless you are
               writing a Perl debugger.

               The final semicolon, if any, may be omitted from the value of
               EXPR.

           Block eval
               If the code to be executed doesn't vary, you may use the eval-
               BLOCK form to trap run-time errors without incurring the
               penalty of recompiling each time.  The error, if any, is still
               returned in $@.  Examples:

                   # make divide-by-zero nonfatal
                   eval { $answer = $a / $b; }; warn $@ if $@;

                   # same thing, but less efficient
                   eval '$answer = $a / $b'; warn $@ if $@;

                   # a compile-time error
                   eval { $answer = }; # WRONG

                   # a run-time error
                   eval '$answer =';   # sets $@

               If you want to trap errors when loading an XS module, some
               problems with the binary interface (such as Perl version skew)
               may be fatal even with "eval" unless $ENV{PERL_DL_NONLAZY} is
               set.  See perlrun.

               Using the "eval {}" form as an exception trap in libraries does
               have some issues.  Due to the current arguably broken state of
               "__DIE__" hooks, you may wish not to trigger any "__DIE__"
               hooks that user code may have installed.  You can use the
               "local $SIG{__DIE__}" construct for this purpose, as this
               example shows:

                   # a private exception trap for divide-by-zero
                   eval { local $SIG{'__DIE__'}; $answer = $a / $b; };
                   warn $@ if $@;

               This is especially significant, given that "__DIE__" hooks can
               call "die" again, which has the effect of changing their error
               messages:

                   # __DIE__ hooks may modify error messages
                   {
                      local $SIG{'__DIE__'} =
                             sub { (my $x = $_[0]) =~ s/foo/bar/g; die $x };
                      eval { die "foo lives here" };
                      print $@ if $@;                # prints "bar lives here"
                   }

               Because this promotes action at a distance, this
               counterintuitive behavior may be fixed in a future release.

               "eval BLOCK" does not count as a loop, so the loop control
               statements "next", "last", or "redo" cannot be used to leave or
               restart the block.

               The final semicolon, if any, may be omitted from within the
               BLOCK.

       evalbytes EXPR
       evalbytes
           This function is similar to a string eval, except it always parses
           its argument (or $_ if EXPR is omitted) as a string of independent
           bytes.

           If called when "useutf8" is in effect, the string will be assumed
           to be encoded in UTF-8, and "evalbytes" will make a temporary copy
           to work from, downgraded to non-UTF-8.  If this is not possible
           (because one or more characters in it require UTF-8), the
           "evalbytes" will fail with the error stored in $@.

           Bytes that correspond to ASCII-range code points will have their
           normal meanings for operators in the string.  The treatment of the
           other bytes depends on if the "'unicode_strings"" feature is in
           effect.

           Of course, variables that are UTF-8 and are referred to in the
           string retain that:

            my $a = "\x{100}";
            evalbytes 'print ord $a, "\n"';

           prints

            256

           and $@ is empty.

           Source filters activated within the evaluated code apply to the
           code itself.

           "evalbytes" is available starting in Perl v5.16.  To access it, you
           must say "CORE::evalbytes", but you can omit the "CORE::" if the
           "evalbytes" feature is enabled.  This is enabled automatically with
           a "use v5.16" (or higher) declaration in the current scope.

       exec LIST
       exec PROGRAM LIST
           The "exec" function executes a system command and never returns;
           use "system" instead of "exec" if you want it to return.  It fails
           and returns false only if the command does not exist and it is
           executed directly instead of via your system's command shell (see
           below).

           Since it's a common mistake to use "exec" instead of "system", Perl
           warns you if "exec" is called in void context and if there is a
           following statement that isn't "die", "warn", or "exit" (if
           warnings are enabled--but you always do that, right?).  If you
           really want to follow an "exec" with some other statement, you can
           use one of these styles to avoid the warning:

               exec ('foo')   or print STDERR "couldn't exec foo: $!";
               { exec ('foo') }; print STDERR "couldn't exec foo: $!";

           If there is more than one argument in LIST, this calls execvp(3)
           with the arguments in LIST.  If there is only one element in LIST,
           the argument is checked for shell metacharacters, and if there are
           any, the entire argument is passed to the system's command shell
           for parsing (this is "/bin/sh -c" on Unix platforms, but varies on
           other platforms).  If there are no shell metacharacters in the
           argument, it is split into words and passed directly to "execvp",
           which is more efficient.  Examples:

               exec '/bin/echo', 'Your arguments are: ', @ARGV;
               exec "sort $outfile | uniq";

           If you don't really want to execute the first argument, but want to
           lie to the program you are executing about its own name, you can
           specify the program you actually want to run as an "indirect
           object" (without a comma) in front of the LIST, as in "exec PROGRAM
           LIST".  (This always forces interpretation of the LIST as a
           multivalued list, even if there is only a single scalar in the
           list.)  Example:

               my $shell = '/bin/csh';
               exec $shell '-sh';    # pretend it's a login shell

           or, more directly,

               exec {'/bin/csh'} '-sh';  # pretend it's a login shell

           When the arguments get executed via the system shell, results are
           subject to its quirks and capabilities.  See "`STRING`" in perlop
           for details.

           Using an indirect object with "exec" or "system" is also more
           secure.  This usage (which also works fine with "system") forces
           interpretation of the arguments as a multivalued list, even if the
           list had just one argument.  That way you're safe from the shell
           expanding wildcards or splitting up words with whitespace in them.

               my @args = ( "echo surprise" );

               exec @args;               # subject to shell escapes
                                           # if @args == 1
               exec { $args[0] } @args;  # safe even with one-arg list

           The first version, the one without the indirect object, ran the
           echo program, passing it "surprise" an argument.  The second
           version didn't; it tried to run a program named "echo surprise",
           didn't find it, and set $? to a non-zero value indicating failure.

           On Windows, only the "exec PROGRAM LIST" indirect object syntax
           will reliably avoid using the shell; "exec LIST", even with more
           than one element, will fall back to the shell if the first spawn
           fails.

           Perl attempts to flush all files opened for output before the exec,
           but this may not be supported on some platforms (see perlport).  To
           be safe, you may need to set $| ($AUTOFLUSH in English) or call the
           "autoflush" method of "IO::Handle" on any open handles to avoid
           lost output.

           Note that "exec" will not call your "END" blocks, nor will it
           invoke "DESTROY" methods on your objects.

           Portability issues: "exec" in perlport.

       exists EXPR
           Given an expression that specifies an element of a hash, returns
           true if the specified element in the hash has ever been
           initialized, even if the corresponding value is undefined.

               print "Exists\n"    if exists $hash{$key};
               print "Defined\n"   if defined $hash{$key};
               print "True\n"      if $hash{$key};

           exists may also be called on array elements, but its behavior is
           much less obvious and is strongly tied to the use of "delete" on
           arrays.

           WARNING: Calling "exists" on array values is strongly discouraged.
           The notion of deleting or checking the existence of Perl array
           elements is not conceptually coherent, and can lead to surprising
           behavior.

               print "Exists\n"    if exists $array[$index];
               print "Defined\n"   if defined $array[$index];
               print "True\n"      if $array[$index];

           A hash or array element can be true only if it's defined and
           defined only if it exists, but the reverse doesn't necessarily hold
           true.

           Given an expression that specifies the name of a subroutine,
           returns true if the specified subroutine has ever been declared,
           even if it is undefined.  Mentioning a subroutine name for exists
           or defined does not count as declaring it.  Note that a subroutine
           that does not exist may still be callable: its package may have an
           "AUTOLOAD" method that makes it spring into existence the first
           time that it is called; see perlsub.

               print "Exists\n"  if exists &subroutine;
               print "Defined\n" if defined &subroutine;

           Note that the EXPR can be arbitrarily complicated as long as the
           final operation is a hash or array key lookup or subroutine name:

               if (exists $ref->{A}->{B}->{$key})  { }
               if (exists $hash{A}{B}{$key})       { }

               if (exists $ref->{A}->{B}->[$ix])   { }
               if (exists $hash{A}{B}[$ix])        { }

               if (exists &{$ref->{A}{B}{$key}})   { }

           Although the most deeply nested array or hash element will not
           spring into existence just because its existence was tested, any
           intervening ones will.  Thus "$ref->{"A"}" and "$ref->{"A"}->{"B"}"
           will spring into existence due to the existence test for the $key
           element above.  This happens anywhere the arrow operator is used,
           including even here:

               undef $ref;
               if (exists $ref->{"Some key"})    { }
               print $ref;  # prints HASH(0x80d3d5c)

           Use of a subroutine call, rather than a subroutine name, as an
           argument to "exists" is an error.

               exists &sub;    # OK
               exists &sub();  # Error

       exit EXPR
       exit
           Evaluates EXPR and exits immediately with that value.    Example:

               my $ans = <STDIN>;
               exit 0 if $ans =~ /^[Xx]/;

           See also "die".  If EXPR is omitted, exits with 0 status.  The only
           universally recognized values for EXPR are 0 for success and 1 for
           error; other values are subject to interpretation depending on the
           environment in which the Perl program is running.  For example,
           exiting 69 (EX_UNAVAILABLE) from a sendmail incoming-mail filter
           will cause the mailer to return the item undelivered, but that's
           not true everywhere.

           Don't use "exit" to abort a subroutine if there's any chance that
           someone might want to trap whatever error happened.  Use "die"
           instead, which can be trapped by an "eval".

           The "exit" function does not always exit immediately.  It calls any
           defined "END" routines first, but these "END" routines may not
           themselves abort the exit.  Likewise any object destructors that
           need to be called are called before the real exit.  "END" routines
           and destructors can change the exit status by modifying $?.  If
           this is a problem, you can call "POSIX::_exit($status)" to avoid
           "END" and destructor processing.  See perlmod for details.

           Portability issues: "exit" in perlport.

       exp EXPR
       exp Returns e (the natural logarithm base) to the power of EXPR.  If
           EXPR is omitted, gives "exp($_)".

       fc EXPR
       fc  Returns the casefolded version of EXPR.  This is the internal
           function implementing the "\F" escape in double-quoted strings.

           Casefolding is the process of mapping strings to a form where case
           differences are erased; comparing two strings in their casefolded
           form is effectively a way of asking if two strings are equal,
           regardless of case.

           Roughly, if you ever found yourself writing this

               lc($this) eq lc($that)    # Wrong!
                   # or
               uc($this) eq uc($that)    # Also wrong!
                   # or
               $this =~ /^\Q$that\E\z/i  # Right!

           Now you can write

               fc($this) eq fc($that)

           And get the correct results.

           Perl only implements the full form of casefolding, but you can
           access the simple folds using "casefold()" in Unicode::UCD and
           "prop_invmap()" in Unicode::UCD.  For further information on
           casefolding, refer to the Unicode Standard, specifically sections
           3.13 "Default Case Operations", 4.2 "Case-Normative", and 5.18
           "Case Mappings", available at
           <http://www.unicode.org/versions/latest/>, as well as the Case
           Charts available at <http://www.unicode.org/charts/case/>.

           If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.

           This function behaves the same way under various pragmas, such as
           within "usefeature'unicode_strings", as "lc" does, with the single
           exception of "fc" of LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E) within
           the scope of "uselocale".  The foldcase of this character would
           normally be "ss", but as explained in the "lc" section, case
           changes that cross the 255/256 boundary are problematic under
           locales, and are hence prohibited.  Therefore, this function under
           locale returns instead the string "\x{17F}\x{17F}", which is the
           LATIN SMALL LETTER LONG S.  Since that character itself folds to
           "s", the string of two of them together should be equivalent to a
           single U+1E9E when foldcased.

           While the Unicode Standard defines two additional forms of
           casefolding, one for Turkic languages and one that never maps one
           character into multiple characters, these are not provided by the
           Perl core.  However, the CPAN module "Unicode::Casing" may be used
           to provide an implementation.

           "fc" is available only if the "fc" feature is enabled or if it is
           prefixed with "CORE::".  The "fc" feature is enabled automatically
           with a "use v5.16" (or higher) declaration in the current scope.

       fcntl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR
           Implements the fcntl(2) function.  You'll probably have to say

               use Fcntl;

           first to get the correct constant definitions.  Argument processing
           and value returned work just like "ioctl" below.  For example:

               use Fcntl;
               my $flags = fcntl($filehandle, F_GETFL, 0)
                   or die "Can't fcntl F_GETFL: $!";

           You don't have to check for "defined" on the return from "fcntl".
           Like "ioctl", it maps a 0 return from the system call into "0 but
           true" in Perl.  This string is true in boolean context and 0 in
           numeric context.  It is also exempt from the normal "Argument "..."
           isn't numeric" warnings on improper numeric conversions.

           Note that "fcntl" raises an exception if used on a machine that
           doesn't implement fcntl(2).  See the Fcntl module or your fcntl(2)
           manpage to learn what functions are available on your system.

           Here's an example of setting a filehandle named $REMOTE to be non-
           blocking at the system level.  You'll have to negotiate $| on your
           own, though.

               use Fcntl qw(F_GETFL F_SETFL O_NONBLOCK);

               my $flags = fcntl($REMOTE, F_GETFL, 0)
                   or die "Can't get flags for the socket: $!\n";

               fcntl($REMOTE, F_SETFL, $flags | O_NONBLOCK)
                   or die "Can't set flags for the socket: $!\n";

           Portability issues: "fcntl" in perlport.

       __FILE__
           A special token that returns the name of the file in which it
           occurs.

       fileno FILEHANDLE
       fileno DIRHANDLE
           Returns the file descriptor for a filehandle or directory handle,
           or undefined if the filehandle is not open.  If there is no real
           file descriptor at the OS level, as can happen with filehandles
           connected to memory objects via "open" with a reference for the
           third argument, -1 is returned.

           This is mainly useful for constructing bitmaps for "select" and
           low-level POSIX tty-handling operations.  If FILEHANDLE is an
           expression, the value is taken as an indirect filehandle, generally
           its name.

           You can use this to find out whether two handles refer to the same
           underlying descriptor:

               if (fileno($this) != -1 && fileno($this) == fileno($that)) {
                   print "\$this and \$that are dups\n";
               } elsif (fileno($this) != -1 && fileno($that) != -1) {
                   print "\$this and \$that have different " .
                       "underlying file descriptors\n";
               } else {
                   print "At least one of \$this and \$that does " .
                       "not have a real file descriptor\n";
               }

           The behavior of "fileno" on a directory handle depends on the
           operating system.  On a system with dirfd(3) or similar, "fileno"
           on a directory handle returns the underlying file descriptor
           associated with the handle; on systems with no such support, it
           returns the undefined value, and sets $! (errno).

       flock FILEHANDLE,OPERATION
           Calls flock(2), or an emulation of it, on FILEHANDLE.  Returns true
           for success, false on failure.  Produces a fatal error if used on a
           machine that doesn't implement flock(2), fcntl(2) locking, or
           lockf(3).  "flock" is Perl's portable file-locking interface,
           although it locks entire files only, not records.

           Two potentially non-obvious but traditional "flock" semantics are
           that it waits indefinitely until the lock is granted, and that its
           locks are merely advisory.  Such discretionary locks are more
           flexible, but offer fewer guarantees.  This means that programs
           that do not also use "flock" may modify files locked with "flock".
           See perlport, your port's specific documentation, and your system-
           specific local manpages for details.  It's best to assume
           traditional behavior if you're writing portable programs.  (But if
           you're not, you should as always feel perfectly free to write for
           your own system's idiosyncrasies (sometimes called "features").
           Slavish adherence to portability concerns shouldn't get in the way
           of your getting your job done.)

           OPERATION is one of LOCK_SH, LOCK_EX, or LOCK_UN, possibly combined
           with LOCK_NB.  These constants are traditionally valued 1, 2, 8 and
           4, but you can use the symbolic names if you import them from the
           Fcntl module, either individually, or as a group using the ":flock"
           tag.  LOCK_SH requests a shared lock, LOCK_EX requests an exclusive
           lock, and LOCK_UN releases a previously requested lock.  If LOCK_NB
           is bitwise-or'ed with LOCK_SH or LOCK_EX, then "flock" returns
           immediately rather than blocking waiting for the lock; check the
           return status to see if you got it.

           To avoid the possibility of miscoordination, Perl now flushes
           FILEHANDLE before locking or unlocking it.

           Note that the emulation built with lockf(3) doesn't provide shared
           locks, and it requires that FILEHANDLE be open with write intent.
           These are the semantics that lockf(3) implements.  Most if not all
           systems implement lockf(3) in terms of fcntl(2) locking, though, so
           the differing semantics shouldn't bite too many people.

           Note that the fcntl(2) emulation of flock(3) requires that
           FILEHANDLE be open with read intent to use LOCK_SH and requires
           that it be open with write intent to use LOCK_EX.

           Note also that some versions of "flock" cannot lock things over the
           network; you would need to use the more system-specific "fcntl" for
           that.  If you like you can force Perl to ignore your system's
           flock(2) function, and so provide its own fcntl(2)-based emulation,
           by passing the switch "-Ud_flock" to the Configure program when you
           configure and build a new Perl.

           Here's a mailbox appender for BSD systems.

               # import LOCK_* and SEEK_END constants
               use Fcntl qw(:flock SEEK_END);

               sub lock {
                   my ($fh) = @_;
                   flock($fh, LOCK_EX) or die "Cannot lock mailbox - $!\n";
                   # and, in case we're running on a very old UNIX
                   # variant without the modern O_APPEND semantics...
                   seek($fh, 0, SEEK_END) or die "Cannot seek - $!\n";
               }

               sub unlock {
                   my ($fh) = @_;
                   flock($fh, LOCK_UN) or die "Cannot unlock mailbox - $!\n";
               }

               open(my $mbox, ">>", "/usr/spool/mail/$ENV{'USER'}")
                   or die "Can't open mailbox: $!";

               lock($mbox);
               print $mbox $msg,"\n\n";
               unlock($mbox);

           On systems that support a real flock(2), locks are inherited across
           "fork" calls, whereas those that must resort to the more capricious
           fcntl(2) function lose their locks, making it seriously harder to
           write servers.

           See also DB_File for other "flock" examples.

           Portability issues: "flock" in perlport.

       fork
           Does a fork(2) system call to create a new process running the same
           program at the same point.  It returns the child pid to the parent
           process, 0 to the child process, or "undef" if the fork is
           unsuccessful.  File descriptors (and sometimes locks on those
           descriptors) are shared, while everything else is copied.  On most
           systems supporting fork(2), great care has gone into making it
           extremely efficient (for example, using copy-on-write technology on
           data pages), making it the dominant paradigm for multitasking over
           the last few decades.

           Perl attempts to flush all files opened for output before forking
           the child process, but this may not be supported on some platforms
           (see perlport).  To be safe, you may need to set $| ($AUTOFLUSH in
           English) or call the "autoflush" method of "IO::Handle" on any open
           handles to avoid duplicate output.

           If you "fork" without ever waiting on your children, you will
           accumulate zombies.  On some systems, you can avoid this by setting
           $SIG{CHLD} to "IGNORE".  See also perlipc for more examples of
           forking and reaping moribund children.

           Note that if your forked child inherits system file descriptors
           like STDIN and STDOUT that are actually connected by a pipe or
           socket, even if you exit, then the remote server (such as, say, a
           CGI script or a backgrounded job launched from a remote shell)
           won't think you're done.  You should reopen those to /dev/null if
           it's any issue.

           On some platforms such as Windows, where the fork(2) system call is
           not available, Perl can be built to emulate "fork" in the Perl
           interpreter.  The emulation is designed, at the level of the Perl
           program, to be as compatible as possible with the "Unix" fork(2).
           However it has limitations that have to be considered in code
           intended to be portable.  See perlfork for more details.

           Portability issues: "fork" in perlport.

       format
           Declare a picture format for use by the "write" function.  For
           example:

               format Something =
                   Test: @<<<<<<<< @||||| @>>>>>
                         $str,     $%,    '$' . int($num)
               .

               $str = "widget";
               $num = $cost/$quantity;
               $~ = 'Something';
               write;

           See perlform for many details and examples.

       formline PICTURE,LIST
           This is an internal function used by "format"s, though you may call
           it, too.  It formats (see perlform) a list of values according to
           the contents of PICTURE, placing the output into the format output
           accumulator, $^A (or $ACCUMULATOR in English).  Eventually, when a
           "write" is done, the contents of $^A are written to some
           filehandle.  You could also read $^A and then set $^A back to "".
           Note that a format typically does one "formline" per line of form,
           but the "formline" function itself doesn't care how many newlines
           are embedded in the PICTURE.  This means that the "~" and "~~"
           tokens treat the entire PICTURE as a single line.  You may
           therefore need to use multiple formlines to implement a single
           record format, just like the "format" compiler.

           Be careful if you put double quotes around the picture, because an
           "@" character may be taken to mean the beginning of an array name.
           "formline" always returns true.  See perlform for other examples.

           If you are trying to use this instead of "write" to capture the
           output, you may find it easier to open a filehandle to a scalar
           ("open my $fh, ">", \$output") and write to that instead.

       getc FILEHANDLE
       getc
           Returns the next character from the input file attached to
           FILEHANDLE, or the undefined value at end of file or if there was
           an error (in the latter case $! is set).  If FILEHANDLE is omitted,
           reads from STDIN.  This is not particularly efficient.  However, it
           cannot be used by itself to fetch single characters without waiting
           for the user to hit enter.  For that, try something more like:

               if ($BSD_STYLE) {
                   system "stty cbreak </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1";
               }
               else {
                   system "stty", '-icanon', 'eol', "\001";
               }

               my $key = getc(STDIN);

               if ($BSD_STYLE) {
                   system "stty -cbreak </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1";
               }
               else {
                   system 'stty', 'icanon', 'eol', '^@'; # ASCII NUL
               }
               print "\n";

           Determination of whether $BSD_STYLE should be set is left as an
           exercise to the reader.

           The "POSIX::getattr" function can do this more portably on systems
           purporting POSIX compliance.  See also the "Term::ReadKey" module
           on CPAN.

       getlogin
           This implements the C library function of the same name, which on
           most systems returns the current login from /etc/utmp, if any.  If
           it returns the empty string, use "getpwuid".

               my $login = getlogin || getpwuid($<) || "Kilroy";

           Do not consider "getlogin" for authentication: it is not as secure
           as "getpwuid".

           Portability issues: "getlogin" in perlport.

       getpeername SOCKET
           Returns the packed sockaddr address of the other end of the SOCKET
           connection.

               use Socket;
               my $hersockaddr    = getpeername($sock);
               my ($port, $iaddr) = sockaddr_in($hersockaddr);
               my $herhostname    = gethostbyaddr($iaddr, AF_INET);
               my $herstraddr     = inet_ntoa($iaddr);

       getpgrp PID
           Returns the current process group for the specified PID.  Use a PID
           of 0 to get the current process group for the current process.
           Will raise an exception if used on a machine that doesn't implement
           getpgrp(2).  If PID is omitted, returns the process group of the
           current process.  Note that the POSIX version of "getpgrp" does not
           accept a PID argument, so only "PID==0" is truly portable.

           Portability issues: "getpgrp" in perlport.

       getppid
           Returns the process id of the parent process.

           Note for Linux users: Between v5.8.1 and v5.16.0 Perl would work
           around non-POSIX thread semantics the minority of Linux systems
           (and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD systems) that used LinuxThreads, this
           emulation has since been removed.  See the documentation for $$ for
           details.

           Portability issues: "getppid" in perlport.

       getpriority WHICH,WHO
           Returns the current priority for a process, a process group, or a
           user.  (See getpriority(2).)  Will raise a fatal exception if used
           on a machine that doesn't implement getpriority(2).

           "WHICH" can be any of "PRIO_PROCESS", "PRIO_PGRP" or "PRIO_USER"
           imported from "RESOURCE CONSTANTS" in POSIX.

           Portability issues: "getpriority" in perlport.

       getpwnam NAME
       getgrnam NAME
       gethostbyname NAME
       getnetbyname NAME
       getprotobyname NAME
       getpwuid UID
       getgrgid GID
       getservbyname NAME,PROTO
       gethostbyaddr ADDR,ADDRTYPE
       getnetbyaddr ADDR,ADDRTYPE
       getprotobynumber NUMBER
       getservbyport PORT,PROTO
       getpwent
       getgrent
       gethostent
       getnetent
       getprotoent
       getservent
       setpwent
       setgrent
       sethostent STAYOPEN
       setnetent STAYOPEN
       setprotoent STAYOPEN
       setservent STAYOPEN
       endpwent
       endgrent
       endhostent
       endnetent
       endprotoent
       endservent
           These routines are the same as their counterparts in the system C
           library.  In list context, the return values from the various get
           routines are as follows:

            #    0        1          2           3         4
            my ( $name,   $passwd,   $gid,       $members  ) = getgr*
            my ( $name,   $aliases,  $addrtype,  $net      ) = getnet*
            my ( $name,   $aliases,  $port,      $proto    ) = getserv*
            my ( $name,   $aliases,  $proto                ) = getproto*
            my ( $name,   $aliases,  $addrtype,  $length,  @addrs ) = gethost*
            my ( $name,   $passwd,   $uid,       $gid,     $quota,
               $comment,  $gcos,     $dir,       $shell,   $expire ) = getpw*
            #    5        6          7           8         9

           (If the entry doesn't exist, the return value is a single
           meaningless true value.)

           The exact meaning of the $gcos field varies but it usually contains
           the real name of the user (as opposed to the login name) and other
           information pertaining to the user.  Beware, however, that in many
           system users are able to change this information and therefore it
           cannot be trusted and therefore the $gcos is tainted (see perlsec).
           The $passwd and $shell, user's encrypted password and login shell,
           are also tainted, for the same reason.

           In scalar context, you get the name, unless the function was a
           lookup by name, in which case you get the other thing, whatever it
           is.  (If the entry doesn't exist you get the undefined value.)  For
           example:

               my $uid   = getpwnam($name);
               my $name  = getpwuid($num);
               my $name  = getpwent();
               my $gid   = getgrnam($name);
               my $name  = getgrgid($num);
               my $name  = getgrent();
               # etc.

           In getpw*() the fields $quota, $comment, and $expire are special in
           that they are unsupported on many systems.  If the $quota is
           unsupported, it is an empty scalar.  If it is supported, it usually
           encodes the disk quota.  If the $comment field is unsupported, it
           is an empty scalar.  If it is supported it usually encodes some
           administrative comment about the user.  In some systems the $quota
           field may be $change or $age, fields that have to do with password
           aging.  In some systems the $comment field may be $class.  The
           $expire field, if present, encodes the expiration period of the
           account or the password.  For the availability and the exact
           meaning of these fields in your system, please consult getpwnam(3)
           and your system's pwd.h file.  You can also find out from within
           Perl what your $quota and $comment fields mean and whether you have
           the $expire field by using the "Config" module and the values
           "d_pwquota", "d_pwage", "d_pwchange", "d_pwcomment", and
           "d_pwexpire".  Shadow password files are supported only if your
           vendor has implemented them in the intuitive fashion that calling
           the regular C library routines gets the shadow versions if you're
           running under privilege or if there exists the shadow(3) functions
           as found in System V (this includes Solaris and Linux).  Those
           systems that implement a proprietary shadow password facility are
           unlikely to be supported.

           The $members value returned by getgr*() is a space-separated list
           of the login names of the members of the group.

           For the gethost*() functions, if the "h_errno" variable is
           supported in C, it will be returned to you via $? if the function
           call fails.  The @addrs value returned by a successful call is a
           list of raw addresses returned by the corresponding library call.
           In the Internet domain, each address is four bytes long; you can
           unpack it by saying something like:

               my ($w,$x,$y,$z) = unpack('W4',$addr[0]);

           The Socket library makes this slightly easier:

               use Socket;
               my $iaddr = inet_aton("127.1"); # or whatever address
               my $name  = gethostbyaddr($iaddr, AF_INET);

               # or going the other way
               my $straddr = inet_ntoa($iaddr);

           In the opposite way, to resolve a hostname to the IP address you
           can write this:

               use Socket;
               my $packed_ip = gethostbyname("www.perl.org");
               my $ip_address;
               if (defined $packed_ip) {
                   $ip_address = inet_ntoa($packed_ip);
               }

           Make sure "gethostbyname" is called in SCALAR context and that its
           return value is checked for definedness.

           The "getprotobynumber" function, even though it only takes one
           argument, has the precedence of a list operator, so beware:

               getprotobynumber $number eq 'icmp'   # WRONG
               getprotobynumber($number eq 'icmp')  # actually means this
               getprotobynumber($number) eq 'icmp'  # better this way

           If you get tired of remembering which element of the return list
           contains which return value, by-name interfaces are provided in
           standard modules: "File::stat", "Net::hostent", "Net::netent",
           "Net::protoent", "Net::servent", "Time::gmtime", "Time::localtime",
           and "User::grent".  These override the normal built-ins, supplying
           versions that return objects with the appropriate names for each
           field.  For example:

              use File::stat;
              use User::pwent;
              my $is_his = (stat($filename)->uid == pwent($whoever)->uid);

           Even though it looks as though they're the same method calls (uid),
           they aren't, because a "File::stat" object is different from a
           "User::pwent" object.

           Many of these functions are not safe in a multi-threaded
           environment where more than one thread can be using them.  In
           particular, functions like "getpwent()" iterate per-process and not
           per-thread, so if two threads are simultaneously iterating, neither
           will get all the records.

           Some systems have thread-safe versions of some of the functions,
           such as "getpwnam_r()" instead of "getpwnam()".  There, Perl
           automatically and invisibly substitutes the thread-safe version,
           without notice.  This means that code that safely runs on some
           systems can fail on others that lack the thread-safe versions.

           Portability issues: "getpwnam" in perlport to "endservent" in
           perlport.

       getsockname SOCKET
           Returns the packed sockaddr address of this end of the SOCKET
           connection, in case you don't know the address because you have
           several different IPs that the connection might have come in on.

               use Socket;
               my $mysockaddr = getsockname($sock);
               my ($port, $myaddr) = sockaddr_in($mysockaddr);
               printf "Connect to %s [%s]\n",
                  scalar gethostbyaddr($myaddr, AF_INET),
                  inet_ntoa($myaddr);

       getsockopt SOCKET,LEVEL,OPTNAME
           Queries the option named OPTNAME associated with SOCKET at a given
           LEVEL.  Options may exist at multiple protocol levels depending on
           the socket type, but at least the uppermost socket level SOL_SOCKET
           (defined in the "Socket" module) will exist.  To query options at
           another level the protocol number of the appropriate protocol
           controlling the option should be supplied.  For example, to
           indicate that an option is to be interpreted by the TCP protocol,
           LEVEL should be set to the protocol number of TCP, which you can
           get using "getprotobyname".

           The function returns a packed string representing the requested
           socket option, or "undef" on error, with the reason for the error
           placed in $!.  Just what is in the packed string depends on LEVEL
           and OPTNAME; consult getsockopt(2) for details.  A common case is
           that the option is an integer, in which case the result is a packed
           integer, which you can decode using "unpack" with the "i" (or "I")
           format.

           Here's an example to test whether Nagle's algorithm is enabled on a
           socket:

               use Socket qw(:all);

               defined(my $tcp = getprotobyname("tcp"))
                   or die "Could not determine the protocol number for tcp";
               # my $tcp = IPPROTO_TCP; # Alternative
               my $packed = getsockopt($socket, $tcp, TCP_NODELAY)
                   or die "getsockopt TCP_NODELAY: $!";
               my $nodelay = unpack("I", $packed);
               print "Nagle's algorithm is turned ",
                      $nodelay ? "off\n" : "on\n";

           Portability issues: "getsockopt" in perlport.

       glob EXPR
       glob
           In list context, returns a (possibly empty) list of filename
           expansions on the value of EXPR such as the standard Unix shell
           /bin/csh would do.  In scalar context, glob iterates through such
           filename expansions, returning undef when the list is exhausted.
           This is the internal function implementing the "<*.c>" operator,
           but you can use it directly.  If EXPR is omitted, $_ is used.  The
           "<*.c>" operator is discussed in more detail in "I/O Operators" in
           perlop.

           Note that "glob" splits its arguments on whitespace and treats each
           segment as separate pattern.  As such, "glob("*.c *.h")" matches
           all files with a .c or .h extension.  The expression "glob(".* *")"
           matches all files in the current working directory.  If you want to
           glob filenames that might contain whitespace, you'll have to use
           extra quotes around the spacey filename to protect it.  For
           example, to glob filenames that have an "e" followed by a space
           followed by an "f", use one of:

               my @spacies = <"*e f*">;
               my @spacies = glob '"*e f*"';
               my @spacies = glob q("*e f*");

           If you had to get a variable through, you could do this:

               my @spacies = glob "'*${var}e f*'";
               my @spacies = glob qq("*${var}e f*");

           If non-empty braces are the only wildcard characters used in the
           "glob", no filenames are matched, but potentially many strings are
           returned.  For example, this produces nine strings, one for each
           pairing of fruits and colors:

               my @many = glob "{apple,tomato,cherry}={green,yellow,red}";

           This operator is implemented using the standard "File::Glob"
           extension.  See File::Glob for details, including "bsd_glob", which
           does not treat whitespace as a pattern separator.

           If a "glob" expression is used as the condition of a "while" or
           "for" loop, then it will be implicitly assigned to $_.  If either a
           "glob" expression or an explicit assignment of a "glob" expression
           to a scalar is used as a "while"/"for" condition, then the
           condition actually tests for definedness of the expression's value,
           not for its regular truth value.

           Portability issues: "glob" in perlport.

       gmtime EXPR
       gmtime
           Works just like "localtime" but the returned values are localized
           for the standard Greenwich time zone.

           Note: When called in list context, $isdst, the last value returned
           by gmtime, is always 0.  There is no Daylight Saving Time in GMT.

           Portability issues: "gmtime" in perlport.

       goto LABEL
       goto EXPR
       goto &NAME
           The "goto LABEL" form finds the statement labeled with LABEL and
           resumes execution there.  It can't be used to get out of a block or
           subroutine given to "sort".  It can be used to go almost anywhere
           else within the dynamic scope, including out of subroutines, but
           it's usually better to use some other construct such as "last" or
           "die".  The author of Perl has never felt the need to use this form
           of "goto" (in Perl, that is; C is another matter).  (The difference
           is that C does not offer named loops combined with loop control.
           Perl does, and this replaces most structured uses of "goto" in
           other languages.)

           The "goto EXPR" form expects to evaluate "EXPR" to a code reference
           or a label name.  If it evaluates to a code reference, it will be
           handled like "goto &NAME", below.  This is especially useful for
           implementing tail recursion via "goto __SUB__".

           If the expression evaluates to a label name, its scope will be
           resolved dynamically.  This allows for computed "goto"s per
           FORTRAN, but isn't necessarily recommended if you're optimizing for
           maintainability:

               goto ("FOO", "BAR", "GLARCH")[$i];

           As shown in this example, "goto EXPR" is exempt from the "looks
           like a function" rule.  A pair of parentheses following it does not
           (necessarily) delimit its argument.  "goto("NE")."XT"" is
           equivalent to "goto NEXT".  Also, unlike most named operators, this
           has the same precedence as assignment.

           Use of "goto LABEL" or "goto EXPR" to jump into a construct is
           deprecated and will issue a warning.  Even then, it may not be used
           to go into any construct that requires initialization, such as a
           subroutine, a "foreach" loop, or a "given" block.  In general, it
           may not be used to jump into the parameter of a binary or list
           operator, but it may be used to jump into the first parameter of a
           binary operator.  (The "=" assignment operator's "first" operand is
           its right-hand operand.)  It also can't be used to go into a
           construct that is optimized away.

           The "goto &NAME" form is quite different from the other forms of
           "goto".  In fact, it isn't a goto in the normal sense at all, and
           doesn't have the stigma associated with other gotos.  Instead, it
           exits the current subroutine (losing any changes set by "local")
           and immediately calls in its place the named subroutine using the
           current value of @_.  This is used by "AUTOLOAD" subroutines that
           wish to load another subroutine and then pretend that the other
           subroutine had been called in the first place (except that any
           modifications to @_ in the current subroutine are propagated to the
           other subroutine.) After the "goto", not even "caller" will be able
           to tell that this routine was called first.

           NAME needn't be the name of a subroutine; it can be a scalar
           variable containing a code reference or a block that evaluates to a
           code reference.

       grep BLOCK LIST
       grep EXPR,LIST
           This is similar in spirit to, but not the same as, grep(1) and its
           relatives.  In particular, it is not limited to using regular
           expressions.

           Evaluates the BLOCK or EXPR for each element of LIST (locally
           setting $_ to each element) and returns the list value consisting
           of those elements for which the expression evaluated to true.  In
           scalar context, returns the number of times the expression was
           true.

               my @foo = grep(!/^#/, @bar);    # weed out comments

           or equivalently,

               my @foo = grep {!/^#/} @bar;    # weed out comments

           Note that $_ is an alias to the list value, so it can be used to
           modify the elements of the LIST.  While this is useful and
           supported, it can cause bizarre results if the elements of LIST are
           not variables.  Similarly, grep returns aliases into the original
           list, much as a for loop's index variable aliases the list
           elements.  That is, modifying an element of a list returned by grep
           (for example, in a "foreach", "map" or another "grep") actually
           modifies the element in the original list.  This is usually
           something to be avoided when writing clear code.

           See also "map" for a list composed of the results of the BLOCK or
           EXPR.

       hex EXPR
       hex Interprets EXPR as a hex string and returns the corresponding
           numeric value.  If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.

               print hex '0xAf'; # prints '175'
               print hex 'aF';   # same
               $valid_input =~ /\A(?:0?[xX])?(?:_?[0-9a-fA-F])*\z/

           A hex string consists of hex digits and an optional "0x" or "x"
           prefix.  Each hex digit may be preceded by a single underscore,
           which will be ignored.  Any other character triggers a warning and
           causes the rest of the string to be ignored (even leading
           whitespace, unlike "oct").  Only integers can be represented, and
           integer overflow triggers a warning.

           To convert strings that might start with any of 0, "0x", or "0b",
           see "oct".  To present something as hex, look into "printf",
           "sprintf", and "unpack".

       import LIST
           There is no builtin "import" function.  It is just an ordinary
           method (subroutine) defined (or inherited) by modules that wish to
           export names to another module.  The "use" function calls the
           "import" method for the package used.  See also "use", perlmod, and
           Exporter.

       index STR,SUBSTR,POSITION
       index STR,SUBSTR
           The index function searches for one string within another, but
           without the wildcard-like behavior of a full regular-expression
           pattern match.  It returns the position of the first occurrence of
           SUBSTR in STR at or after POSITION.  If POSITION is omitted, starts
           searching from the beginning of the string.  POSITION before the
           beginning of the string or after its end is treated as if it were
           the beginning or the end, respectively.  POSITION and the return
           value are based at zero.  If the substring is not found, "index"
           returns -1.

       int EXPR
       int Returns the integer portion of EXPR.  If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.
           You should not use this function for rounding: one because it
           truncates towards 0, and two because machine representations of
           floating-point numbers can sometimes produce counterintuitive
           results.  For example, "int(-6.725/0.025)" produces -268 rather
           than the correct -269; that's because it's really more like
           -268.99999999999994315658 instead.  Usually, the "sprintf",
           "printf", or the "POSIX::floor" and "POSIX::ceil" functions will
           serve you better than will "int".

       ioctl FILEHANDLE,FUNCTION,SCALAR
           Implements the ioctl(2) function.  You'll probably first have to
           say

               require "sys/ioctl.ph";  # probably in
                                        # $Config{archlib}/sys/ioctl.ph

           to get the correct function definitions.  If sys/ioctl.ph doesn't
           exist or doesn't have the correct definitions you'll have to roll
           your own, based on your C header files such as <sys/ioctl.h>.
           (There is a Perl script called h2ph that comes with the Perl kit
           that may help you in this, but it's nontrivial.)  SCALAR will be
           read and/or written depending on the FUNCTION; a C pointer to the
           string value of SCALAR will be passed as the third argument of the
           actual "ioctl" call.  (If SCALAR has no string value but does have
           a numeric value, that value will be passed rather than a pointer to
           the string value.  To guarantee this to be true, add a 0 to the
           scalar before using it.)  The "pack" and "unpack" functions may be
           needed to manipulate the values of structures used by "ioctl".

           The return value of "ioctl" (and "fcntl") is as follows:

               if OS returns:      then Perl returns:
                   -1               undefined value
                    0              string "0 but true"
               anything else           that number

           Thus Perl returns true on success and false on failure, yet you can
           still easily determine the actual value returned by the operating
           system:

               my $retval = ioctl(...) || -1;
               printf "System returned %d\n", $retval;

           The special string "0 but true" is exempt from "Argument "..."
           isn't numeric" warnings on improper numeric conversions.

           Portability issues: "ioctl" in perlport.

       join EXPR,LIST
           Joins the separate strings of LIST into a single string with fields
           separated by the value of EXPR, and returns that new string.
           Example:

              my $rec = join(':', $login,$passwd,$uid,$gid,$gcos,$home,$shell);

           Beware that unlike "split", "join" doesn't take a pattern as its
           first argument.  Compare "split".

       keys HASH
       keys ARRAY
           Called in list context, returns a list consisting of all the keys
           of the named hash, or in Perl 5.12 or later only, the indices of an
           array.  Perl releases prior to 5.12 will produce a syntax error if
           you try to use an array argument.  In scalar context, returns the
           number of keys or indices.

           Hash entries are returned in an apparently random order.  The
           actual random order is specific to a given hash; the exact same
           series of operations on two hashes may result in a different order
           for each hash.  Any insertion into the hash may change the order,
           as will any deletion, with the exception that the most recent key
           returned by "each" or "keys" may be deleted without changing the
           order.  So long as a given hash is unmodified you may rely on
           "keys", "values" and "each" to repeatedly return the same order as
           each other.  See "Algorithmic Complexity Attacks" in perlsec for
           details on why hash order is randomized.  Aside from the guarantees
           provided here the exact details of Perl's hash algorithm and the
           hash traversal order are subject to change in any release of Perl.
           Tied hashes may behave differently to Perl's hashes with respect to
           changes in order on insertion and deletion of items.

           As a side effect, calling "keys" resets the internal iterator of
           the HASH or ARRAY (see "each") before yielding the keys.  In
           particular, calling "keys" in void context resets the iterator with
           no other overhead.

           Here is yet another way to print your environment:

               my @keys = keys %ENV;
               my @values = values %ENV;
               while (@keys) {
                   print pop(@keys), '=', pop(@values), "\n";
               }

           or how about sorted by key:

               foreach my $key (sort(keys %ENV)) {
                   print $key, '=', $ENV{$key}, "\n";
               }

           The returned values are copies of the original keys in the hash, so
           modifying them will not affect the original hash.  Compare
           "values".

           To sort a hash by value, you'll need to use a "sort" function.
           Here's a descending numeric sort of a hash by its values:

               foreach my $key (sort { $hash{$b} <=> $hash{$a} } keys %hash) {
                   printf "%4d %s\n", $hash{$key}, $key;
               }

           Used as an lvalue, "keys" allows you to increase the number of hash
           buckets allocated for the given hash.  This can gain you a measure
           of efficiency if you know the hash is going to get big.  (This is
           similar to pre-extending an array by assigning a larger number to
           $#array.)  If you say

               keys %hash = 200;

           then %hash will have at least 200 buckets allocated for it--256 of
           them, in fact, since it rounds up to the next power of two.  These
           buckets will be retained even if you do "%hash = ()", use "undef
           %hash" if you want to free the storage while %hash is still in
           scope.  You can't shrink the number of buckets allocated for the
           hash using "keys" in this way (but you needn't worry about doing
           this by accident, as trying has no effect).  "keys @array" in an
           lvalue context is a syntax error.

           Starting with Perl 5.14, an experimental feature allowed "keys" to
           take a scalar expression. This experiment has been deemed
           unsuccessful, and was removed as of Perl 5.24.

           To avoid confusing would-be users of your code who are running
           earlier versions of Perl with mysterious syntax errors, put this
           sort of thing at the top of your file to signal that your code will
           work only on Perls of a recent vintage:

               use 5.012;  # so keys/values/each work on arrays

           See also "each", "values", and "sort".

       kill SIGNAL, LIST
       kill SIGNAL
           Sends a signal to a list of processes.  Returns the number of
           arguments that were successfully used to signal (which is not
           necessarily the same as the number of processes actually killed,
           e.g. where a process group is killed).

               my $cnt = kill 'HUP', $child1, $child2;
               kill 'KILL', @goners;

           SIGNAL may be either a signal name (a string) or a signal number.
           A signal name may start with a "SIG" prefix, thus "FOO" and
           "SIGFOO" refer to the same signal.  The string form of SIGNAL is
           recommended for portability because the same signal may have
           different numbers in different operating systems.

           A list of signal names supported by the current platform can be
           found in $Config{sig_name}, which is provided by the "Config"
           module.  See Config for more details.

           A negative signal name is the same as a negative signal number,
           killing process groups instead of processes.  For example, "kill
           '-KILL', $pgrp" and "kill -9, $pgrp" will send "SIGKILL" to the
           entire process group specified.  That means you usually want to use
           positive not negative signals.

           If SIGNAL is either the number 0 or the string "ZERO" (or
           "SIGZERO"), no signal is sent to the process, but "kill" checks
           whether it's possible to send a signal to it (that means, to be
           brief, that the process is owned by the same user, or we are the
           super-user).  This is useful to check that a child process is still
           alive (even if only as a zombie) and hasn't changed its UID.  See
           perlport for notes on the portability of this construct.

           The behavior of kill when a PROCESS number is zero or negative
           depends on the operating system.  For example, on POSIX-conforming
           systems, zero will signal the current process group, -1 will signal
           all processes, and any other negative PROCESS number will act as a
           negative signal number and kill the entire process group specified.

           If both the SIGNAL and the PROCESS are negative, the results are
           undefined.  A warning may be produced in a future version.

           See "Signals" in perlipc for more details.

           On some platforms such as Windows where the fork(2) system call is
           not available, Perl can be built to emulate "fork" at the
           interpreter level.  This emulation has limitations related to kill
           that have to be considered, for code running on Windows and in code
           intended to be portable.

           See perlfork for more details.

           If there is no LIST of processes, no signal is sent, and the return
           value is 0.  This form is sometimes used, however, because it
           causes tainting checks to be run.  But see "Laundering and
           Detecting Tainted Data" in perlsec.

           Portability issues: "kill" in perlport.

       last LABEL
       last EXPR
       last
           The "last" command is like the "break" statement in C (as used in
           loops); it immediately exits the loop in question.  If the LABEL is
           omitted, the command refers to the innermost enclosing loop.  The
           "last EXPR" form, available starting in Perl 5.18.0, allows a label
           name to be computed at run time, and is otherwise identical to
           "last LABEL".  The "continue" block, if any, is not executed:

               LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
                   last LINE if /^$/;  # exit when done with header
                   #...
               }

           "last" cannot return a value from a block that typically returns a
           value, such as "eval {}", "sub {}", or "do {}". It will perform its
           flow control behavior, which precludes any return value. It should
           not be used to exit a "grep" or "map" operation.

           Note that a block by itself is semantically identical to a loop
           that executes once.  Thus "last" can be used to effect an early
           exit out of such a block.

           See also "continue" for an illustration of how "last", "next", and
           "redo" work.

           Unlike most named operators, this has the same precedence as
           assignment.  It is also exempt from the looks-like-a-function rule,
           so "last ("foo")."bar"" will cause "bar" to be part of the argument
           to "last".

       lc EXPR
       lc  Returns a lowercased version of EXPR.  This is the internal
           function implementing the "\L" escape in double-quoted strings.

           If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.

           What gets returned depends on several factors:

           If "use bytes" is in effect:
               The results follow ASCII rules.  Only the characters "A-Z"
               change, to "a-z" respectively.

           Otherwise, if "use locale" for "LC_CTYPE" is in effect:
               Respects current "LC_CTYPE" locale for code points < 256; and
               uses Unicode rules for the remaining code points (this last can
               only happen if the UTF8 flag is also set).  See perllocale.

               Starting in v5.20, Perl uses full Unicode rules if the locale
               is UTF-8.  Otherwise, there is a deficiency in this scheme,
               which is that case changes that cross the 255/256 boundary are
               not well-defined.  For example, the lower case of LATIN CAPITAL
               LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E) in Unicode rules is U+00DF (on ASCII
               platforms).   But under "use locale" (prior to v5.20 or not a
               UTF-8 locale), the lower case of U+1E9E is itself, because 0xDF
               may not be LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S in the current locale,
               and Perl has no way of knowing if that character even exists in
               the locale, much less what code point it is.  Perl returns a
               result that is above 255 (almost always the input character
               unchanged), for all instances (and there aren't many) where the
               255/256 boundary would otherwise be crossed; and starting in
               v5.22, it raises a locale warning.

           Otherwise, If EXPR has the UTF8 flag set:
               Unicode rules are used for the case change.

           Otherwise, if "use feature 'unicode_strings'" or "use locale
           ':not_characters'" is in effect:
               Unicode rules are used for the case change.

           Otherwise:
               ASCII rules are used for the case change.  The lowercase of any
               character outside the ASCII range is the character itself.

       lcfirst EXPR
       lcfirst
           Returns the value of EXPR with the first character lowercased.
           This is the internal function implementing the "\l" escape in
           double-quoted strings.

           If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.

           This function behaves the same way under various pragmas, such as
           in a locale, as "lc" does.

       length EXPR
       length
           Returns the length in characters of the value of EXPR.  If EXPR is
           omitted, returns the length of $_.  If EXPR is undefined, returns
           "undef".

           This function cannot be used on an entire array or hash to find out
           how many elements these have.  For that, use "scalar @array" and
           "scalar keys %hash", respectively.

           Like all Perl character operations, "length" normally deals in
           logical characters, not physical bytes.  For how many bytes a
           string encoded as UTF-8 would take up, use
           "length(Encode::encode('UTF-8', EXPR))" (you'll have to "use
           Encode" first).  See Encode and perlunicode.

       __LINE__
           A special token that compiles to the current line number.

       link OLDFILE,NEWFILE
           Creates a new filename linked to the old filename.  Returns true
           for success, false otherwise.

           Portability issues: "link" in perlport.

       listen SOCKET,QUEUESIZE
           Does the same thing that the listen(2) system call does.  Returns
           true if it succeeded, false otherwise.  See the example in
           "Sockets: Client/Server Communication" in perlipc.

       local EXPR
           You really probably want to be using "my" instead, because "local"
           isn't what most people think of as "local".  See "Private Variables
           via my()" in perlsub for details.

           A local modifies the listed variables to be local to the enclosing
           block, file, or eval.  If more than one value is listed, the list
           must be placed in parentheses.  See "Temporary Values via local()"
           in perlsub for details, including issues with tied arrays and
           hashes.

           The "delete local EXPR" construct can also be used to localize the
           deletion of array/hash elements to the current block.  See
           "Localized deletion of elements of composite types" in perlsub.

       localtime EXPR
       localtime
           Converts a time as returned by the time function to a 9-element
           list with the time analyzed for the local time zone.  Typically
           used as follows:

               #     0    1    2     3     4    5     6     7     8
               my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) =
                                                           localtime(time);

           All list elements are numeric and come straight out of the C
           `struct tm'.  $sec, $min, and $hour are the seconds, minutes, and
           hours of the specified time.

           $mday is the day of the month and $mon the month in the range
           0..11, with 0 indicating January and 11 indicating December.  This
           makes it easy to get a month name from a list:

               my @abbr = qw(Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec);
               print "$abbr[$mon] $mday";
               # $mon=9, $mday=18 gives "Oct 18"

           $year contains the number of years since 1900.  To get a 4-digit
           year write:

               $year += 1900;

           To get the last two digits of the year (e.g., "01" in 2001) do:

               $year = sprintf("%02d", $year % 100);

           $wday is the day of the week, with 0 indicating Sunday and 3
           indicating Wednesday.  $yday is the day of the year, in the range
           0..364 (or 0..365 in leap years.)

           $isdst is true if the specified time occurs during Daylight Saving
           Time, false otherwise.

           If EXPR is omitted, "localtime" uses the current time (as returned
           by "time").

           In scalar context, "localtime" returns the ctime(3) value:

               my $now_string = localtime;  # e.g., "Thu Oct 13 04:54:34 1994"

           The format of this scalar value is not locale-dependent but built
           into Perl.  For GMT instead of local time use the "gmtime" builtin.
           See also the "Time::Local" module (for converting seconds, minutes,
           hours, and such back to the integer value returned by "time"), and
           the POSIX module's "strftime" and "mktime" functions.

           To get somewhat similar but locale-dependent date strings, set up
           your locale environment variables appropriately (please see
           perllocale) and try for example:

               use POSIX qw(strftime);
               my $now_string = strftime "%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y", localtime;
               # or for GMT formatted appropriately for your locale:
               my $now_string = strftime "%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y", gmtime;

           Note that %a and %b, the short forms of the day of the week and the
           month of the year, may not necessarily be three characters wide.

           The Time::gmtime and Time::localtime modules provide a convenient,
           by-name access mechanism to the "gmtime" and "localtime" functions,
           respectively.

           For a comprehensive date and time representation look at the
           DateTime module on CPAN.

           Portability issues: "localtime" in perlport.

       lock THING
           This function places an advisory lock on a shared variable or
           referenced object contained in THING until the lock goes out of
           scope.

           The value returned is the scalar itself, if the argument is a
           scalar, or a reference, if the argument is a hash, array or
           subroutine.

           "lock" is a "weak keyword"; this means that if you've defined a
           function by this name (before any calls to it), that function will
           be called instead.  If you are not under "use threads::shared" this
           does nothing.  See threads::shared.

       log EXPR
       log Returns the natural logarithm (base e) of EXPR.  If EXPR is
           omitted, returns the log of $_.  To get the log of another base,
           use basic algebra: The base-N log of a number is equal to the
           natural log of that number divided by the natural log of N.  For
           example:

               sub log10 {
                   my $n = shift;
                   return log($n)/log(10);
               }

           See also "exp" for the inverse operation.

       lstat FILEHANDLE
       lstat EXPR
       lstat DIRHANDLE
       lstat
           Does the same thing as the "stat" function (including setting the
           special "_" filehandle) but stats a symbolic link instead of the
           file the symbolic link points to.  If symbolic links are
           unimplemented on your system, a normal "stat" is done.  For much
           more detailed information, please see the documentation for "stat".

           If EXPR is omitted, stats $_.

           Portability issues: "lstat" in perlport.

       m// The match operator.  See "Regexp Quote-Like Operators" in perlop.

       map BLOCK LIST
       map EXPR,LIST
           Evaluates the BLOCK or EXPR for each element of LIST (locally
           setting $_ to each element) and composes a list of the results of
           each such evaluation.  Each element of LIST may produce zero, one,
           or more elements in the generated list, so the number of elements
           in the generated list may differ from that in LIST.  In scalar
           context, returns the total number of elements so generated.  In
           list context, returns the generated list.

               my @chars = map(chr, @numbers);

           translates a list of numbers to the corresponding characters.

               my @squares = map { $_ * $_ } @numbers;

           translates a list of numbers to their squared values.

               my @squares = map { $_ > 5 ? ($_ * $_) : () } @numbers;

           shows that number of returned elements can differ from the number
           of input elements.  To omit an element, return an empty list ().
           This could also be achieved by writing

               my @squares = map { $_ * $_ } grep { $_ > 5 } @numbers;

           which makes the intention more clear.

           Map always returns a list, which can be assigned to a hash such
           that the elements become key/value pairs.  See perldata for more
           details.

               my %hash = map { get_a_key_for($_) => $_ } @array;

           is just a funny way to write

               my %hash;
               foreach (@array) {
                   $hash{get_a_key_for($_)} = $_;
               }

           Note that $_ is an alias to the list value, so it can be used to
           modify the elements of the LIST.  While this is useful and
           supported, it can cause bizarre results if the elements of LIST are
           not variables.  Using a regular "foreach" loop for this purpose
           would be clearer in most cases.  See also "grep" for a list
           composed of those items of the original list for which the BLOCK or
           EXPR evaluates to true.

           "{" starts both hash references and blocks, so "map { ..." could be
           either the start of map BLOCK LIST or map EXPR, LIST.  Because Perl
           doesn't look ahead for the closing "}" it has to take a guess at
           which it's dealing with based on what it finds just after the "{".
           Usually it gets it right, but if it doesn't it won't realize
           something is wrong until it gets to the "}" and encounters the
           missing (or unexpected) comma.  The syntax error will be reported
           close to the "}", but you'll need to change something near the "{"
           such as using a unary "+" or semicolon to give Perl some help:

            my %hash = map {  "\L$_" => 1  } @array # perl guesses EXPR. wrong
            my %hash = map { +"\L$_" => 1  } @array # perl guesses BLOCK. right
            my %hash = map {; "\L$_" => 1  } @array # this also works
            my %hash = map { ("\L$_" => 1) } @array # as does this
            my %hash = map {  lc($_) => 1  } @array # and this.
            my %hash = map +( lc($_) => 1 ), @array # this is EXPR and works!

            my %hash = map  ( lc($_), 1 ),   @array # evaluates to (1, @array)

           or to force an anon hash constructor use "+{":

               my @hashes = map +{ lc($_) => 1 }, @array # EXPR, so needs
                                                         # comma at end

           to get a list of anonymous hashes each with only one entry apiece.

       mkdir FILENAME,MODE
       mkdir FILENAME
       mkdir
           Creates the directory specified by FILENAME, with permissions
           specified by MODE (as modified by "umask").  If it succeeds it
           returns true; otherwise it returns false and sets $! (errno).  MODE
           defaults to 0777 if omitted, and FILENAME defaults to $_ if
           omitted.

           In general, it is better to create directories with a permissive
           MODE and let the user modify that with their "umask" than it is to
           supply a restrictive MODE and give the user no way to be more
           permissive.  The exceptions to this rule are when the file or
           directory should be kept private (mail files, for instance).  The
           documentation for "umask" discusses the choice of MODE in more
           detail.

           Note that according to the POSIX 1003.1-1996 the FILENAME may have
           any number of trailing slashes.  Some operating and filesystems do
           not get this right, so Perl automatically removes all trailing
           slashes to keep everyone happy.

           To recursively create a directory structure, look at the
           "make_path" function of the File::Path module.

       msgctl ID,CMD,ARG
           Calls the System V IPC function msgctl(2).  You'll probably have to
           say

               use IPC::SysV;

           first to get the correct constant definitions.  If CMD is
           "IPC_STAT", then ARG must be a variable that will hold the returned
           "msqid_ds" structure.  Returns like "ioctl": the undefined value
           for error, "0 but true" for zero, or the actual return value
           otherwise.  See also "SysV IPC" in perlipc and the documentation
           for "IPC::SysV" and "IPC::Semaphore".

           Portability issues: "msgctl" in perlport.

       msgget KEY,FLAGS
           Calls the System V IPC function msgget(2).  Returns the message
           queue id, or "undef" on error.  See also "SysV IPC" in perlipc and
           the documentation for "IPC::SysV" and "IPC::Msg".

           Portability issues: "msgget" in perlport.

       msgrcv ID,VAR,SIZE,TYPE,FLAGS
           Calls the System V IPC function msgrcv to receive a message from
           message queue ID into variable VAR with a maximum message size of
           SIZE.  Note that when a message is received, the message type as a
           native long integer will be the first thing in VAR, followed by the
           actual message.  This packing may be opened with "unpack("l! a*")".
           Taints the variable.  Returns true if successful, false on error.
           See also "SysV IPC" in perlipc and the documentation for
           "IPC::SysV" and "IPC::Msg".

           Portability issues: "msgrcv" in perlport.

       msgsnd ID,MSG,FLAGS
           Calls the System V IPC function msgsnd to send the message MSG to
           the message queue ID.  MSG must begin with the native long integer
           message type, be followed by the length of the actual message, and
           then finally the message itself.  This kind of packing can be
           achieved with "pack("l! a*", $type, $message)".  Returns true if
           successful, false on error.  See also "SysV IPC" in perlipc and the
           documentation for "IPC::SysV" and "IPC::Msg".

           Portability issues: "msgsnd" in perlport.

       my VARLIST
       my TYPE VARLIST
       my VARLIST : ATTRS
       my TYPE VARLIST : ATTRS
           A "my" declares the listed variables to be local (lexically) to the
           enclosing block, file, or "eval".  If more than one variable is
           listed, the list must be placed in parentheses.

           The exact semantics and interface of TYPE and ATTRS are still
           evolving.  TYPE may be a bareword, a constant declared with "use
           constant", or "__PACKAGE__".  It is currently bound to the use of
           the fields pragma, and attributes are handled using the attributes
           pragma, or starting from Perl 5.8.0 also via the
           Attribute::Handlers module.  See "Private Variables via my()" in
           perlsub for details.

           Note that with a parenthesised list, "undef" can be used as a dummy
           placeholder, for example to skip assignment of initial values:

               my ( undef, $min, $hour ) = localtime;

       next LABEL
       next EXPR
       next
           The "next" command is like the "continue" statement in C; it starts
           the next iteration of the loop:

               LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
                   next LINE if /^#/;  # discard comments
                   #...
               }

           Note that if there were a "continue" block on the above, it would
           get executed even on discarded lines.  If LABEL is omitted, the
           command refers to the innermost enclosing loop.  The "next EXPR"
           form, available as of Perl 5.18.0, allows a label name to be
           computed at run time, being otherwise identical to "next LABEL".

           "next" cannot return a value from a block that typically returns a
           value, such as "eval {}", "sub {}", or "do {}". It will perform its
           flow control behavior, which precludes any return value. It should
           not be used to exit a "grep" or "map" operation.

           Note that a block by itself is semantically identical to a loop
           that executes once.  Thus "next" will exit such a block early.

           See also "continue" for an illustration of how "last", "next", and
           "redo" work.

           Unlike most named operators, this has the same precedence as
           assignment.  It is also exempt from the looks-like-a-function rule,
           so "next ("foo")."bar"" will cause "bar" to be part of the argument
           to "next".

       no MODULE VERSION LIST
       no MODULE VERSION
       no MODULE LIST
       no MODULE
       no VERSION
           See the "use" function, of which "no" is the opposite.

       oct EXPR
       oct Interprets EXPR as an octal string and returns the corresponding
           value.  (If EXPR happens to start off with "0x", interprets it as a
           hex string.  If EXPR starts off with "0b", it is interpreted as a
           binary string.  Leading whitespace is ignored in all three cases.)
           The following will handle decimal, binary, octal, and hex in
           standard Perl notation:

               $val = oct($val) if $val =~ /^0/;

           If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.   To go the other way (produce a
           number in octal), use "sprintf" or "printf":

               my $dec_perms = (stat("filename"))[2] & 07777;
               my $oct_perm_str = sprintf "%o", $perms;

           The "oct" function is commonly used when a string such as 644 needs
           to be converted into a file mode, for example.  Although Perl
           automatically converts strings into numbers as needed, this
           automatic conversion assumes base 10.

           Leading white space is ignored without warning, as too are any
           trailing non-digits, such as a decimal point ("oct" only handles
           non-negative integers, not negative integers or floating point).

       open FILEHANDLE,EXPR
       open FILEHANDLE,MODE,EXPR
       open FILEHANDLE,MODE,EXPR,LIST
       open FILEHANDLE,MODE,REFERENCE
       open FILEHANDLE
           Opens the file whose filename is given by EXPR, and associates it
           with FILEHANDLE.

           Simple examples to open a file for reading:

               open(my $fh, "<", "input.txt")
                   or die "Can't open < input.txt: $!";

           and for writing:

               open(my $fh, ">", "output.txt")
                   or die "Can't open > output.txt: $!";

           (The following is a comprehensive reference to "open": for a
           gentler introduction you may consider perlopentut.)

           If FILEHANDLE is an undefined scalar variable (or array or hash
           element), a new filehandle is autovivified, meaning that the
           variable is assigned a reference to a newly allocated anonymous
           filehandle.  Otherwise if FILEHANDLE is an expression, its value is
           the real filehandle.  (This is considered a symbolic reference, so
           "use strict "refs"" should not be in effect.)

           If three (or more) arguments are specified, the open mode
           (including optional encoding) in the second argument are distinct
           from the filename in the third.  If MODE is "<" or nothing, the
           file is opened for input.  If MODE is ">", the file is opened for
           output, with existing files first being truncated ("clobbered") and
           nonexisting files newly created.  If MODE is ">>", the file is
           opened for appending, again being created if necessary.

           You can put a "+" in front of the ">" or "<" to indicate that you
           want both read and write access to the file; thus "+<" is almost
           always preferred for read/write updates--the "+>" mode would
           clobber the file first.  You can't usually use either read-write
           mode for updating textfiles, since they have variable-length
           records.  See the -i switch in perlrun for a better approach.  The
           file is created with permissions of 0666 modified by the process's
           "umask" value.

           These various prefixes correspond to the fopen(3) modes of "r",
           "r+", "w", "w+", "a", and "a+".

           In the one- and two-argument forms of the call, the mode and
           filename should be concatenated (in that order), preferably
           separated by white space.  You can--but shouldn't--omit the mode in
           these forms when that mode is "<".  It is safe to use the two-
           argument form of "open" if the filename argument is a known
           literal.

           For three or more arguments if MODE is "|-", the filename is
           interpreted as a command to which output is to be piped, and if
           MODE is "-|", the filename is interpreted as a command that pipes
           output to us.  In the two-argument (and one-argument) form, one
           should replace dash ("-") with the command.  See "Using open() for
           IPC" in perlipc for more examples of this.  (You are not allowed to
           "open" to a command that pipes both in and out, but see IPC::Open2,
           IPC::Open3, and "Bidirectional Communication with Another Process"
           in perlipc for alternatives.)

           In the form of pipe opens taking three or more arguments, if LIST
           is specified (extra arguments after the command name) then LIST
           becomes arguments to the command invoked if the platform supports
           it.  The meaning of "open" with more than three arguments for non-
           pipe modes is not yet defined, but experimental "layers" may give
           extra LIST arguments meaning.

           In the two-argument (and one-argument) form, opening "<-" or "-"
           opens STDIN and opening ">-" opens STDOUT.

           You may (and usually should) use the three-argument form of open to
           specify I/O layers (sometimes referred to as "disciplines") to
           apply to the handle that affect how the input and output are
           processed (see open and PerlIO for more details).  For example:

             open(my $fh, "<:encoding(UTF-8)", $filename)
               || die "Can't open UTF-8 encoded $filename: $!";

           opens the UTF8-encoded file containing Unicode characters; see
           perluniintro.  Note that if layers are specified in the three-
           argument form, then default layers stored in ${^OPEN} (see perlvar;
           usually set by the open pragma or the switch "-CioD") are ignored.
           Those layers will also be ignored if you specify a colon with no
           name following it.  In that case the default layer for the
           operating system (:raw on Unix, :crlf on Windows) is used.

           Open returns nonzero on success, the undefined value otherwise.  If
           the "open" involved a pipe, the return value happens to be the pid
           of the subprocess.

           On some systems (in general, DOS- and Windows-based systems)
           "binmode" is necessary when you're not working with a text file.
           For the sake of portability it is a good idea always to use it when
           appropriate, and never to use it when it isn't appropriate.  Also,
           people can set their I/O to be by default UTF8-encoded Unicode, not
           bytes.

           When opening a file, it's seldom a good idea to continue if the
           request failed, so "open" is frequently used with "die".  Even if
           "die" won't do what you want (say, in a CGI script, where you want
           to format a suitable error message (but there are modules that can
           help with that problem)) always check the return value from opening
           a file.

           The filehandle will be closed when its reference count reaches
           zero.  If it is a lexically scoped variable declared with "my",
           that usually means the end of the enclosing scope.  However, this
           automatic close does not check for errors, so it is better to
           explicitly close filehandles, especially those used for writing:

               close($handle)
                  || warn "close failed: $!";

           An older style is to use a bareword as the filehandle, as

               open(FH, "<", "input.txt")
                  or die "Can't open < input.txt: $!";

           Then you can use "FH" as the filehandle, in "close FH" and "<FH>"
           and so on.  Note that it's a global variable, so this form is not
           recommended in new code.

           As a shortcut a one-argument call takes the filename from the
           global scalar variable of the same name as the filehandle:

               $ARTICLE = 100;
               open(ARTICLE) or die "Can't find article $ARTICLE: $!\n";

           Here $ARTICLE must be a global (package) scalar variable - not one
           declared with "my" or "state".

           As a special case the three-argument form with a read/write mode
           and the third argument being "undef":

               open(my $tmp, "+>", undef) or die ...

           opens a filehandle to a newly created empty anonymous temporary
           file.  (This happens under any mode, which makes "+>" the only
           useful and sensible mode to use.)  You will need to "seek" to do
           the reading.

           Perl is built using PerlIO by default.  Unless you've changed this
           (such as building Perl with "Configure -Uuseperlio"), you can open
           filehandles directly to Perl scalars via:

               open(my $fh, ">", \$variable) || ..

           To (re)open "STDOUT" or "STDERR" as an in-memory file, close it
           first:

               close STDOUT;
               open(STDOUT, ">", \$variable)
                   or die "Can't open STDOUT: $!";

           The scalars for in-memory files are treated as octet strings:
           unless the file is being opened with truncation the scalar may not
           contain any code points over 0xFF.

           Opening in-memory files can fail for a variety of reasons.  As with
           any other "open", check the return value for success.

           See perliol for detailed info on PerlIO.

           General examples:

            open(my $log, ">>", "/usr/spool/news/twitlog");
            # if the open fails, output is discarded

            open(my $dbase, "+<", "dbase.mine")      # open for update
                or die "Can't open 'dbase.mine' for update: $!";

            open(my $dbase, "+<dbase.mine")          # ditto
                or die "Can't open 'dbase.mine' for update: $!";

            open(my $article_fh, "-|", "caesar <$article")  # decrypt
                                                            # article
                or die "Can't start caesar: $!";

            open(my $article_fh, "caesar <$article |")      # ditto
                or die "Can't start caesar: $!";

            open(my $out_fh, "|-", "sort >Tmp$$")    # $$ is our process id
                or die "Can't start sort: $!";

            # in-memory files
            open(my $memory, ">", \$var)
                or die "Can't open memory file: $!";
            print $memory "foo!\n";              # output will appear in $var

           You may also, in the Bourne shell tradition, specify an EXPR
           beginning with ">&", in which case the rest of the string is
           interpreted as the name of a filehandle (or file descriptor, if
           numeric) to be duped (as in dup(2)) and opened.  You may use "&"
           after ">", ">>", "<", "+>", "+>>", and "+<".  The mode you specify
           should match the mode of the original filehandle.  (Duping a
           filehandle does not take into account any existing contents of IO
           buffers.)  If you use the three-argument form, then you can pass
           either a number, the name of a filehandle, or the normal "reference
           to a glob".

           Here is a script that saves, redirects, and restores "STDOUT" and
           "STDERR" using various methods:

               #!/usr/bin/perl
               open(my $oldout, ">&STDOUT")     or die "Can't dup STDOUT: $!";
               open(OLDERR,     ">&", \*STDERR) or die "Can't dup STDERR: $!";

               open(STDOUT, '>', "foo.out") or die "Can't redirect STDOUT: $!";
               open(STDERR, ">&STDOUT")     or die "Can't dup STDOUT: $!";

               select STDERR; $| = 1;  # make unbuffered
               select STDOUT; $| = 1;  # make unbuffered

               print STDOUT "stdout 1\n";  # this works for
               print STDERR "stderr 1\n";  # subprocesses too

               open(STDOUT, ">&", $oldout) or die "Can't dup \$oldout: $!";
               open(STDERR, ">&OLDERR")    or die "Can't dup OLDERR: $!";

               print STDOUT "stdout 2\n";
               print STDERR "stderr 2\n";

           If you specify '<&=X', where "X" is a file descriptor number or a
           filehandle, then Perl will do an equivalent of C's fdopen(3) of
           that file descriptor (and not call dup(2)); this is more
           parsimonious of file descriptors.  For example:

               # open for input, reusing the fileno of $fd
               open(my $fh, "<&=", $fd)

           or

               open(my $fh, "<&=$fd")

           or

               # open for append, using the fileno of $oldfh
               open(my $fh, ">&gt;&=", $oldfh)

           Being parsimonious on filehandles is also useful (besides being
           parsimonious) for example when something is dependent on file
           descriptors, like for example locking using "flock".  If you do
           just "open(my $A, ">&gt;&", $B)", the filehandle $A will not have the
           same file descriptor as $B, and therefore "flock($A)" will not
           "flock($B)" nor vice versa.  But with "open(my $A, ">&gt;&=", $B)",
           the filehandles will share the same underlying system file
           descriptor.

           Note that under Perls older than 5.8.0, Perl uses the standard C
           library's' fdopen(3) to implement the "=" functionality.  On many
           Unix systems, fdopen(3) fails when file descriptors exceed a
           certain value, typically 255.  For Perls 5.8.0 and later, PerlIO is
           (most often) the default.

           You can see whether your Perl was built with PerlIO by running
           "perl -V:useperlio".  If it says 'define', you have PerlIO;
           otherwise you don't.

           If you open a pipe on the command "-" (that is, specify either "|-"
           or "-|" with the one- or two-argument forms of "open"), an implicit
           "fork" is done, so "open" returns twice: in the parent process it
           returns the pid of the child process, and in the child process it
           returns (a defined) 0.  Use "defined($pid)" or "//" to determine
           whether the open was successful.

           For example, use either

              my $child_pid = open(my $from_kid, "-|") // die "Can't fork: $!";

           or

              my $child_pid = open(my $to_kid,   "|-") // die "Can't fork: $!";

           followed by

               if ($child_pid) {
                   # am the parent:
                   # either write $to_kid or else read $from_kid
                   ...
                  waitpid $child_pid, 0;
               } else {
                   # am the child; use STDIN/STDOUT normally
                   ...
                   exit;
               }

           The filehandle behaves normally for the parent, but I/O to that
           filehandle is piped from/to the STDOUT/STDIN of the child process.
           In the child process, the filehandle isn't opened--I/O happens
           from/to the new STDOUT/STDIN.  Typically this is used like the
           normal piped open when you want to exercise more control over just
           how the pipe command gets executed, such as when running setuid and
           you don't want to have to scan shell commands for metacharacters.

           The following blocks are more or less equivalent:

               open(my $fh, "|tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'");
               open(my $fh, "|-", "tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'");
               open(my $fh, "|-") || exec 'tr', '[a-z]', '[A-Z]';
               open(my $fh, "|-", "tr", '[a-z]', '[A-Z]');

               open(my $fh, "cat -n '$file'|");
               open(my $fh, "-|", "cat -n '$file'");
               open(my $fh, "-|") || exec "cat", "-n", $file;
               open(my $fh, "-|", "cat", "-n", $file);

           The last two examples in each block show the pipe as "list form",
           which is not yet supported on all platforms.  A good rule of thumb
           is that if your platform has a real "fork" (in other words, if your
           platform is Unix, including Linux and MacOS X), you can use the
           list form.  You would want to use the list form of the pipe so you
           can pass literal arguments to the command without risk of the shell
           interpreting any shell metacharacters in them.  However, this also
           bars you from opening pipes to commands that intentionally contain
           shell metacharacters, such as:

               open(my $fh, "|cat -n | expand -4 | lpr")
                   || die "Can't open pipeline to lpr: $!";

           See "Safe Pipe Opens" in perlipc for more examples of this.

           Perl will attempt to flush all files opened for output before any
           operation that may do a fork, but this may not be supported on some
           platforms (see perlport).  To be safe, you may need to set $|
           ($AUTOFLUSH in English) or call the "autoflush" method of
           "IO::Handle" on any open handles.

           On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on files, the flag
           will be set for the newly opened file descriptor as determined by
           the value of $^F.  See "$^F" in perlvar.

           Closing any piped filehandle causes the parent process to wait for
           the child to finish, then returns the status value in $? and
           "${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}".

           The filename passed to the one- and two-argument forms of "open"
           will have leading and trailing whitespace deleted and normal
           redirection characters honored.  This property, known as "magic
           open", can often be used to good effect.  A user could specify a
           filename of "rsh cat file |", or you could change certain filenames
           as needed:

               $filename =~ s/(.*\.gz)\s*$/gzip -dc < $1|/;
               open(my $fh, $filename) or die "Can't open $filename: $!";

           Use the three-argument form to open a file with arbitrary weird
           characters in it,

               open(my $fh, "<", $file)
                   || die "Can't open $file: $!";

           otherwise it's necessary to protect any leading and trailing
           whitespace:

               $file =~ s#^(\s)#./$1#;
               open(my $fh, "< $file\0")
                   || die "Can't open $file: $!";

           (this may not work on some bizarre filesystems).  One should
           conscientiously choose between the magic and three-argument form of
           "open":

               open(my $in, $ARGV[0]) || die "Can't open $ARGV[0]: $!";

           will allow the user to specify an argument of the form "rsh cat
           file |", but will not work on a filename that happens to have a
           trailing space, while

               open(my $in, "<", $ARGV[0])
                   || die "Can't open $ARGV[0]: $!";

           will have exactly the opposite restrictions. (However, some shells
           support the syntax "perl your_program.pl <( rsh cat file )", which
           produces a filename that can be opened normally.)

           If you want a "real" C open(2), then you should use the "sysopen"
           function, which involves no such magic (but uses different
           filemodes than Perl "open", which corresponds to C fopen(3)).  This
           is another way to protect your filenames from interpretation.  For
           example:

               use IO::Handle;
               sysopen(my $fh, $path, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_EXCL)
                   or die "Can't open $path: $!";
               $fh->autoflush(1);
               print $fh "stuff $$\n";
               seek($fh, 0, 0);
               print "File contains: ", readline($fh);

           See "seek" for some details about mixing reading and writing.

           Portability issues: "open" in perlport.

       opendir DIRHANDLE,EXPR
           Opens a directory named EXPR for processing by "readdir",
           "telldir", "seekdir", "rewinddir", and "closedir".  Returns true if
           successful.  DIRHANDLE may be an expression whose value can be used
           as an indirect dirhandle, usually the real dirhandle name.  If
           DIRHANDLE is an undefined scalar variable (or array or hash
           element), the variable is assigned a reference to a new anonymous
           dirhandle; that is, it's autovivified.  Dirhandles are the same
           objects as filehandles; an I/O object can only be open as one of
           these handle types at once.

           See the example at "readdir".

       ord EXPR
       ord Returns the numeric value of the first character of EXPR.  If EXPR
           is an empty string, returns 0.  If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.  (Note
           character, not byte.)

           For the reverse, see "chr".  See perlunicode for more about
           Unicode.

       our VARLIST
       our TYPE VARLIST
       our VARLIST : ATTRS
       our TYPE VARLIST : ATTRS
           "our" makes a lexical alias to a package (i.e. global) variable of
           the same name in the current package for use within the current
           lexical scope.

           "our" has the same scoping rules as "my" or "state", meaning that
           it is only valid within a lexical scope.  Unlike "my" and "state",
           which both declare new (lexical) variables, "our" only creates an
           alias to an existing variable: a package variable of the same name.

           This means that when "use strict 'vars'" is in effect, "our" lets
           you use a package variable without qualifying it with the package
           name, but only within the lexical scope of the "our" declaration.
           This applies immediately--even within the same statement.

               package Foo;
               use strict;

               $Foo::foo = 23;

               {
                   our $foo;   # alias to $Foo::foo
                   print $foo; # prints 23
               }

               print $Foo::foo; # prints 23

               print $foo; # ERROR: requires explicit package name

           This works even if the package variable has not been used before,
           as package variables spring into existence when first used.

               package Foo;
               use strict;

               our $foo = 23;   # just like $Foo::foo = 23

               print $Foo::foo; # prints 23

           Because the variable becomes legal immediately under "use strict
           'vars'", so long as there is no variable with that name is already
           in scope, you can then reference the package variable again even
           within the same statement.

               package Foo;
               use strict;

               my  $foo = $foo; # error, undeclared $foo on right-hand side
               our $foo = $foo; # no errors

           If more than one variable is listed, the list must be placed in
           parentheses.

               our($bar, $baz);

           An "our" declaration declares an alias for a package variable that
           will be visible across its entire lexical scope, even across
           package boundaries.  The package in which the variable is entered
           is determined at the point of the declaration, not at the point of
           use.  This means the following behavior holds:

               package Foo;
               our $bar;      # declares $Foo::bar for rest of lexical scope
               $bar = 20;

               package Bar;
               print $bar;    # prints 20, as it refers to $Foo::bar

           Multiple "our" declarations with the same name in the same lexical
           scope are allowed if they are in different packages.  If they
           happen to be in the same package, Perl will emit warnings if you
           have asked for them, just like multiple "my" declarations.  Unlike
           a second "my" declaration, which will bind the name to a fresh
           variable, a second "our" declaration in the same package, in the
           same scope, is merely redundant.

               use warnings;
               package Foo;
               our $bar;      # declares $Foo::bar for rest of lexical scope
               $bar = 20;

               package Bar;
               our $bar = 30; # declares $Bar::bar for rest of lexical scope
               print $bar;    # prints 30

               our $bar;      # emits warning but has no other effect
               print $bar;    # still prints 30

           An "our" declaration may also have a list of attributes associated
           with it.

           The exact semantics and interface of TYPE and ATTRS are still
           evolving.  TYPE is currently bound to the use of the fields pragma,
           and attributes are handled using the attributes pragma, or,
           starting from Perl 5.8.0, also via the Attribute::Handlers module.
           See "Private Variables via my()" in perlsub for details.

           Note that with a parenthesised list, "undef" can be used as a dummy
           placeholder, for example to skip assignment of initial values:

               our ( undef, $min, $hour ) = localtime;

           "our" differs from "use vars", which allows use of an unqualified
           name only within the affected package, but across scopes.

       pack TEMPLATE,LIST
           Takes a LIST of values and converts it into a string using the
           rules given by the TEMPLATE.  The resulting string is the
           concatenation of the converted values.  Typically, each converted
           value looks like its machine-level representation.  For example, on
           32-bit machines an integer may be represented by a sequence of 4
           bytes, which  will in Perl be presented as a string that's 4
           characters long.

           See perlpacktut for an introduction to this function.

           The TEMPLATE is a sequence of characters that give the order and
           type of values, as follows:

               a  A string with arbitrary binary data, will be null padded.
               A  A text (ASCII) string, will be space padded.
               Z  A null-terminated (ASCIZ) string, will be null padded.

               b  A bit string (ascending bit order inside each byte,
                  like vec()).
               B  A bit string (descending bit order inside each byte).
               h  A hex string (low nybble first).
               H  A hex string (high nybble first).

               c  A signed char (8-bit) value.
               C  An unsigned char (octet) value.
               W  An unsigned char value (can be greater than 255).

               s  A signed short (16-bit) value.
               S  An unsigned short value.

               l  A signed long (32-bit) value.
               L  An unsigned long value.

               q  A signed quad (64-bit) value.
               Q  An unsigned quad value.
                    (Quads are available only if your system supports 64-bit
                     integer values _and_ if Perl has been compiled to support
                     those.  Raises an exception otherwise.)

               i  A signed integer value.
               I  An unsigned integer value.
                    (This 'integer' is _at_least_ 32 bits wide.  Its exact
                     size depends on what a local C compiler calls 'int'.)

               n  An unsigned short (16-bit) in "network" (big-endian) order.
               N  An unsigned long (32-bit) in "network" (big-endian) order.
               v  An unsigned short (16-bit) in "VAX" (little-endian) order.
               V  An unsigned long (32-bit) in "VAX" (little-endian) order.

               j  A Perl internal signed integer value (IV).
               J  A Perl internal unsigned integer value (UV).

               f  A single-precision float in native format.
               d  A double-precision float in native format.

               F  A Perl internal floating-point value (NV) in native format
               D  A float of long-double precision in native format.
                    (Long doubles are available only if your system supports
                     long double values _and_ if Perl has been compiled to
                     support those.  Raises an exception otherwise.
                     Note that there are different long double formats.)

               p  A pointer to a null-terminated string.
               P  A pointer to a structure (fixed-length string).

               u  A uuencoded string.
               U  A Unicode character number.  Encodes to a character in char-
                  acter mode and UTF-8 (or UTF-EBCDIC in EBCDIC platforms) in
                  byte mode.

               w  A BER compressed integer (not an ASN.1 BER, see perlpacktut
                  for details).  Its bytes represent an unsigned integer in
                  base 128, most significant digit first, with as few digits
                  as possible.  Bit eight (the high bit) is set on each byte
                  except the last.

               x  A null byte (a.k.a ASCII NUL, "\000", chr(0))
               X  Back up a byte.
               @  Null-fill or truncate to absolute position, counted from the
                  start of the innermost ()-group.
               .  Null-fill or truncate to absolute position specified by
                  the value.
               (  Start of a ()-group.

           One or more modifiers below may optionally follow certain letters
           in the TEMPLATE (the second column lists letters for which the
           modifier is valid):

               !   sSlLiI     Forces native (short, long, int) sizes instead
                              of fixed (16-/32-bit) sizes.

               !   xX         Make x and X act as alignment commands.

               !   nNvV       Treat integers as signed instead of unsigned.

               !   @.         Specify position as byte offset in the internal
                              representation of the packed string.  Efficient
                              but dangerous.

               >   sSiIlLqQ   Force big-endian byte-order on the type.
                   jJfFdDpP   (The "big end" touches the construct.)

               <   sSiIlLqQ   Force little-endian byte-order on the type.
                   jJfFdDpP   (The "little end" touches the construct.)

           The ">" and "<" modifiers can also be used on "()" groups to force
           a particular byte-order on all components in that group, including
           all its subgroups.

           The following rules apply:

           o   Each letter may optionally be followed by a number indicating
               the repeat count.  A numeric repeat count may optionally be
               enclosed in brackets, as in "pack("C[80]", @arr)".  The repeat
               count gobbles that many values from the LIST when used with all
               format types other than "a", "A", "Z", "b", "B", "h", "H", "@",
               ".", "x", "X", and "P", where it means something else,
               described below.  Supplying a "*" for the repeat count instead
               of a number means to use however many items are left, except
               for:

               o   "@", "x", and "X", where it is equivalent to 0.

               o   <.>, where it means relative to the start of the string.

               o   "u", where it is equivalent to 1 (or 45, which here is
                   equivalent).

               One can replace a numeric repeat count with a template letter
               enclosed in brackets to use the packed byte length of the
               bracketed template for the repeat count.

               For example, the template "x[L]" skips as many bytes as in a
               packed long, and the template "$t X[$t] $t" unpacks twice
               whatever $t (when variable-expanded) unpacks.  If the template
               in brackets contains alignment commands (such as "x![d]"), its
               packed length is calculated as if the start of the template had
               the maximal possible alignment.

               When used with "Z", a "*" as the repeat count is guaranteed to
               add a trailing null byte, so the resulting string is always one
               byte longer than the byte length of the item itself.

               When used with "@", the repeat count represents an offset from
               the start of the innermost "()" group.

               When used with ".", the repeat count determines the starting
               position to calculate the value offset as follows:

               o   If the repeat count is 0, it's relative to the current
                   position.

               o   If the repeat count is "*", the offset is relative to the
                   start of the packed string.

               o   And if it's an integer n, the offset is relative to the
                   start of the nth innermost "( )" group, or to the start of
                   the string if n is bigger then the group level.

               The repeat count for "u" is interpreted as the maximal number
               of bytes to encode per line of output, with 0, 1 and 2 replaced
               by 45.  The repeat count should not be more than 65.

           o   The "a", "A", and "Z" types gobble just one value, but pack it
               as a string of length count, padding with nulls or spaces as
               needed.  When unpacking, "A" strips trailing whitespace and
               nulls, "Z" strips everything after the first null, and "a"
               returns data with no stripping at all.

               If the value to pack is too long, the result is truncated.  If
               it's too long and an explicit count is provided, "Z" packs only
               "$count-1" bytes, followed by a null byte.  Thus "Z" always
               packs a trailing null, except when the count is 0.

           o   Likewise, the "b" and "B" formats pack a string that's that
               many bits long.  Each such format generates 1 bit of the
               result.  These are typically followed by a repeat count like
               "B8" or "B64".

               Each result bit is based on the least-significant bit of the
               corresponding input character, i.e., on "ord($char)%2".  In
               particular, characters "0" and "1" generate bits 0 and 1, as do
               characters "\000" and "\001".

               Starting from the beginning of the input string, each 8-tuple
               of characters is converted to 1 character of output.  With
               format "b", the first character of the 8-tuple determines the
               least-significant bit of a character; with format "B", it
               determines the most-significant bit of a character.

               If the length of the input string is not evenly divisible by 8,
               the remainder is packed as if the input string were padded by
               null characters at the end.  Similarly during unpacking,
               "extra" bits are ignored.

               If the input string is longer than needed, remaining characters
               are ignored.

               A "*" for the repeat count uses all characters of the input
               field.  On unpacking, bits are converted to a string of 0s and
               1s.

           o   The "h" and "H" formats pack a string that many nybbles (4-bit
               groups, representable as hexadecimal digits, "0".."9" "a".."f")
               long.

               For each such format, "pack" generates 4 bits of result.  With
               non-alphabetical characters, the result is based on the 4
               least-significant bits of the input character, i.e., on
               "ord($char)%16".  In particular, characters "0" and "1"
               generate nybbles 0 and 1, as do bytes "\000" and "\001".  For
               characters "a".."f" and "A".."F", the result is compatible with
               the usual hexadecimal digits, so that "a" and "A" both generate
               the nybble "0xA==10".  Use only these specific hex characters
               with this format.

               Starting from the beginning of the template to "pack", each
               pair of characters is converted to 1 character of output.  With
               format "h", the first character of the pair determines the
               least-significant nybble of the output character; with format
               "H", it determines the most-significant nybble.

               If the length of the input string is not even, it behaves as if
               padded by a null character at the end.  Similarly, "extra"
               nybbles are ignored during unpacking.

               If the input string is longer than needed, extra characters are
               ignored.

               A "*" for the repeat count uses all characters of the input
               field.  For "unpack", nybbles are converted to a string of
               hexadecimal digits.

           o   The "p" format packs a pointer to a null-terminated string.
               You are responsible for ensuring that the string is not a
               temporary value, as that could potentially get deallocated
               before you got around to using the packed result.  The "P"
               format packs a pointer to a structure of the size indicated by
               the length.  A null pointer is created if the corresponding
               value for "p" or "P" is "undef"; similarly with "unpack", where
               a null pointer unpacks into "undef".

               If your system has a strange pointer size--meaning a pointer is
               neither as big as an int nor as big as a long--it may not be
               possible to pack or unpack pointers in big- or little-endian
               byte order.  Attempting to do so raises an exception.

           o   The "/" template character allows packing and unpacking of a
               sequence of items where the packed structure contains a packed
               item count followed by the packed items themselves.  This is
               useful when the structure you're unpacking has encoded the
               sizes or repeat counts for some of its fields within the
               structure itself as separate fields.

               For "pack", you write length-item"/"sequence-item, and the
               length-item describes how the length value is packed.  Formats
               likely to be of most use are integer-packing ones like "n" for
               Java strings, "w" for ASN.1 or SNMP, and "N" for Sun XDR.

               For "pack", sequence-item may have a repeat count, in which
               case the minimum of that and the number of available items is
               used as the argument for length-item.  If it has no repeat
               count or uses a '*', the number of available items is used.

               For "unpack", an internal stack of integer arguments unpacked
               so far is used.  You write "/"sequence-item and the repeat
               count is obtained by popping off the last element from the
               stack.  The sequence-item must not have a repeat count.

               If sequence-item refers to a string type ("A", "a", or "Z"),
               the length-item is the string length, not the number of
               strings.  With an explicit repeat count for pack, the packed
               string is adjusted to that length.  For example:

                This code:                             gives this result:

                unpack("W/a", "\004Gurusamy")          ("Guru")
                unpack("a3/A A*", "007 Bond  J ")      (" Bond", "J")
                unpack("a3 x2 /A A*", "007: Bond, J.") ("Bond, J", ".")

                pack("n/a* w/a","hello,","world")     "\000\006hello,\005world"
                pack("a/W2", ord("a") .. ord("z"))    "2ab"

               The length-item is not returned explicitly from "unpack".

               Supplying a count to the length-item format letter is only
               useful with "A", "a", or "Z".  Packing with a length-item of
               "a" or "Z" may introduce "\000" characters, which Perl does not
               regard as legal in numeric strings.

           o   The integer types "s", "S", "l", and "L" may be followed by a
               "!" modifier to specify native shorts or longs.  As shown in
               the example above, a bare "l" means exactly 32 bits, although
               the native "long" as seen by the local C compiler may be
               larger.  This is mainly an issue on 64-bit platforms.  You can
               see whether using "!" makes any difference this way:

                   printf "format s is %d, s! is %d\n",
                       length pack("s"), length pack("s!");

                   printf "format l is %d, l! is %d\n",
                       length pack("l"), length pack("l!");

               "i!" and "I!" are also allowed, but only for completeness'
               sake: they are identical to "i" and "I".

               The actual sizes (in bytes) of native shorts, ints, longs, and
               long longs on the platform where Perl was built are also
               available from the command line:

                   $ perl -V:{short,int,long{,long}}size
                   shortsize='2';
                   intsize='4';
                   longsize='4';
                   longlongsize='8';

               or programmatically via the "Config" module:

                      use Config;
                      print $Config{shortsize},    "\n";
                      print $Config{intsize},      "\n";
                      print $Config{longsize},     "\n";
                      print $Config{longlongsize}, "\n";

               $Config{longlongsize} is undefined on systems without long long
               support.

           o   The integer formats "s", "S", "i", "I", "l", "L", "j", and "J"
               are inherently non-portable between processors and operating
               systems because they obey native byteorder and endianness.  For
               example, a 4-byte integer 0x12345678 (305419896 decimal) would
               be ordered natively (arranged in and handled by the CPU
               registers) into bytes as

                   0x12 0x34 0x56 0x78  # big-endian
                   0x78 0x56 0x34 0x12  # little-endian

               Basically, Intel and VAX CPUs are little-endian, while
               everybody else, including Motorola m68k/88k, PPC, Sparc, HP PA,
               Power, and Cray, are big-endian.  Alpha and MIPS can be either:
               Digital/Compaq uses (well, used) them in little-endian mode,
               but SGI/Cray uses them in big-endian mode.

               The names big-endian and little-endian are comic references to
               the egg-eating habits of the little-endian Lilliputians and the
               big-endian Blefuscudians from the classic Jonathan Swift
               satire, Gulliver's Travels.  This entered computer lingo via
               the paper "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace" by Danny Cohen,
               USC/ISI IEN 137, April 1, 1980.

               Some systems may have even weirder byte orders such as

                  0x56 0x78 0x12 0x34
                  0x34 0x12 0x78 0x56

               These are called mid-endian, middle-endian, mixed-endian, or
               just weird.

               You can determine your system endianness with this incantation:

                  printf("%#02x ", $_) for unpack("W*", pack L=>0x12345678);

               The byteorder on the platform where Perl was built is also
               available via Config:

                   use Config;
                   print "$Config{byteorder}\n";

               or from the command line:

                   $ perl -V:byteorder

               Byteorders "1234" and "12345678" are little-endian; "4321" and
               "87654321" are big-endian.  Systems with multiarchitecture
               binaries will have "ffff", signifying that static information
               doesn't work, one must use runtime probing.

               For portably packed integers, either use the formats "n", "N",
               "v", and "V" or else use the ">" and "<" modifiers described
               immediately below.  See also perlport.

           o   Also floating point numbers have endianness.  Usually (but not
               always) this agrees with the integer endianness.  Even though
               most platforms these days use the IEEE 754 binary format, there
               are differences, especially if the long doubles are involved.
               You can see the "Config" variables "doublekind" and
               "longdblkind" (also "doublesize", "longdblsize"): the "kind"
               values are enums, unlike "byteorder".

               Portability-wise the best option is probably to keep to the
               IEEE 754 64-bit doubles, and of agreed-upon endianness.
               Another possibility is the "%a") format of "printf".

           o   Starting with Perl 5.10.0, integer and floating-point formats,
               along with the "p" and "P" formats and "()" groups, may all be
               followed by the ">" or "<" endianness modifiers to respectively
               enforce big- or little-endian byte-order.  These modifiers are
               especially useful given how "n", "N", "v", and "V" don't cover
               signed integers, 64-bit integers, or floating-point values.

               Here are some concerns to keep in mind when using an endianness
               modifier:

               o   Exchanging signed integers between different platforms
                   works only when all platforms store them in the same
                   format.  Most platforms store signed integers in two's-
                   complement notation, so usually this is not an issue.

               o   The ">" or "<" modifiers can only be used on floating-point
                   formats on big- or little-endian machines.  Otherwise,
                   attempting to use them raises an exception.

               o   Forcing big- or little-endian byte-order on floating-point
                   values for data exchange can work only if all platforms use
                   the same binary representation such as IEEE floating-point.
                   Even if all platforms are using IEEE, there may still be
                   subtle differences.  Being able to use ">" or "<" on
                   floating-point values can be useful, but also dangerous if
                   you don't know exactly what you're doing.  It is not a
                   general way to portably store floating-point values.

               o   When using ">" or "<" on a "()" group, this affects all
                   types inside the group that accept byte-order modifiers,
                   including all subgroups.  It is silently ignored for all
                   other types.  You are not allowed to override the byte-
                   order within a group that already has a byte-order modifier
                   suffix.

           o   Real numbers (floats and doubles) are in native machine format
               only.  Due to the multiplicity of floating-point formats and
               the lack of a standard "network" representation for them, no
               facility for interchange has been made.  This means that packed
               floating-point data written on one machine may not be readable
               on another, even if both use IEEE floating-point arithmetic
               (because the endianness of the memory representation is not
               part of the IEEE spec).  See also perlport.

               If you know exactly what you're doing, you can use the ">" or
               "<" modifiers to force big- or little-endian byte-order on
               floating-point values.

               Because Perl uses doubles (or long doubles, if configured)
               internally for all numeric calculation, converting from double
               into float and thence to double again loses precision, so
               "unpack("f", pack("f", $foo)") will not in general equal $foo.

           o   Pack and unpack can operate in two modes: character mode ("C0"
               mode) where the packed string is processed per character, and
               UTF-8 byte mode ("U0" mode) where the packed string is
               processed in its UTF-8-encoded Unicode form on a byte-by-byte
               basis.  Character mode is the default unless the format string
               starts with "U".  You can always switch mode mid-format with an
               explicit "C0" or "U0" in the format.  This mode remains in
               effect until the next mode change, or until the end of the "()"
               group it (directly) applies to.

               Using "C0" to get Unicode characters while using "U0" to get
               non-Unicode bytes is not necessarily obvious.   Probably only
               the first of these is what you want:

                   $ perl -CS -E 'say "\x{3B1}\x{3C9}"' |
                     perl -CS -ne 'printf "%v04X\n", $_ for unpack("C0A*", $_)'
                   03B1.03C9
                   $ perl -CS -E 'say "\x{3B1}\x{3C9}"' |
                     perl -CS -ne 'printf "%v02X\n", $_ for unpack("U0A*", $_)'
                   CE.B1.CF.89
                   $ perl -CS -E 'say "\x{3B1}\x{3C9}"' |
                     perl -C0 -ne 'printf "%v02X\n", $_ for unpack("C0A*", $_)'
                   CE.B1.CF.89
                   $ perl -CS -E 'say "\x{3B1}\x{3C9}"' |
                     perl -C0 -ne 'printf "%v02X\n", $_ for unpack("U0A*", $_)'
                   C3.8E.C2.B1.C3.8F.C2.89

               Those examples also illustrate that you should not try to use
               "pack"/"unpack" as a substitute for the Encode module.

           o   You must yourself do any alignment or padding by inserting, for
               example, enough "x"es while packing.  There is no way for
               "pack" and "unpack" to know where characters are going to or
               coming from, so they handle their output and input as flat
               sequences of characters.

           o   A "()" group is a sub-TEMPLATE enclosed in parentheses.  A
               group may take a repeat count either as postfix, or for
               "unpack", also via the "/" template character.  Within each
               repetition of a group, positioning with "@" starts over at 0.
               Therefore, the result of

                   pack("@1A((@2A)@3A)", qw[X Y Z])

               is the string "\0X\0\0YZ".

           o   "x" and "X" accept the "!" modifier to act as alignment
               commands: they jump forward or back to the closest position
               aligned at a multiple of "count" characters.  For example, to
               "pack" or "unpack" a C structure like

                   struct {
                       char   c;    /* one signed, 8-bit character */
                       double d;
                       char   cc[2];
                   }

               one may need to use the template "c x![d] d c[2]".  This
               assumes that doubles must be aligned to the size of double.

               For alignment commands, a "count" of 0 is equivalent to a
               "count" of 1; both are no-ops.

           o   "n", "N", "v" and "V" accept the "!" modifier to represent
               signed 16-/32-bit integers in big-/little-endian order.  This
               is portable only when all platforms sharing packed data use the
               same binary representation for signed integers; for example,
               when all platforms use two's-complement representation.

           o   Comments can be embedded in a TEMPLATE using "#" through the
               end of line.  White space can separate pack codes from each
               other, but modifiers and repeat counts must follow immediately.
               Breaking complex templates into individual line-by-line
               components, suitably annotated, can do as much to improve
               legibility and maintainability of pack/unpack formats as "/x"
               can for complicated pattern matches.

           o   If TEMPLATE requires more arguments than "pack" is given,
               "pack" assumes additional "" arguments.  If TEMPLATE requires
               fewer arguments than given, extra arguments are ignored.

           o   Attempting to pack the special floating point values "Inf" and
               "NaN" (infinity, also in negative, and not-a-number) into
               packed integer values (like "L") is a fatal error.  The reason
               for this is that there simply isn't any sensible mapping for
               these special values into integers.

           Examples:

               $foo = pack("WWWW",65,66,67,68);
               # foo eq "ABCD"
               $foo = pack("W4",65,66,67,68);
               # same thing
               $foo = pack("W4",0x24b6,0x24b7,0x24b8,0x24b9);
               # same thing with Unicode circled letters.
               $foo = pack("U4",0x24b6,0x24b7,0x24b8,0x24b9);
               # same thing with Unicode circled letters.  You don't get the
               # UTF-8 bytes because the U at the start of the format caused
               # a switch to U0-mode, so the UTF-8 bytes get joined into
               # characters
               $foo = pack("C0U4",0x24b6,0x24b7,0x24b8,0x24b9);
               # foo eq "\xe2\x92\xb6\xe2\x92\xb7\xe2\x92\xb8\xe2\x92\xb9"
               # This is the UTF-8 encoding of the string in the
               # previous example

               $foo = pack("ccxxcc",65,66,67,68);
               # foo eq "AB\0\0CD"

               # NOTE: The examples above featuring "W" and "c" are true
               # only on ASCII and ASCII-derived systems such as ISO Latin 1
               # and UTF-8.  On EBCDIC systems, the first example would be
               #      $foo = pack("WWWW",193,194,195,196);

               $foo = pack("s2",1,2);
               # "\001\000\002\000" on little-endian
               # "\000\001\000\002" on big-endian

               $foo = pack("a4","abcd","x","y","z");
               # "abcd"

               $foo = pack("aaaa","abcd","x","y","z");
               # "axyz"

               $foo = pack("a14","abcdefg");
               # "abcdefg\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"

               $foo = pack("i9pl", gmtime);
               # a real struct tm (on my system anyway)

               $utmp_template = "Z8 Z8 Z16 L";
               $utmp = pack($utmp_template, @utmp1);
               # a struct utmp (BSDish)

               @utmp2 = unpack($utmp_template, $utmp);
               # "@utmp1" eq "@utmp2"

               sub bintodec {
                   unpack("N", pack("B32", substr("0" x 32 . shift, -32)));
               }

               $foo = pack('sx2l', 12, 34);
               # short 12, two zero bytes padding, long 34
               $bar = pack('s@4l', 12, 34);
               # short 12, zero fill to position 4, long 34
               # $foo eq $bar
               $baz = pack('s.l', 12, 4, 34);
               # short 12, zero fill to position 4, long 34

               $foo = pack('nN', 42, 4711);
               # pack big-endian 16- and 32-bit unsigned integers
               $foo = pack('S>L>', 42, 4711);
               # exactly the same
               $foo = pack('s<l<', -42, 4711);
               # pack little-endian 16- and 32-bit signed integers
               $foo = pack('(sl)<', -42, 4711);
               # exactly the same

           The same template may generally also be used in "unpack".

       package NAMESPACE
       package NAMESPACE VERSION
       package NAMESPACE BLOCK
       package NAMESPACE VERSION BLOCK
           Declares the BLOCK or the rest of the compilation unit as being in
           the given namespace.  The scope of the package declaration is
           either the supplied code BLOCK or, in the absence of a BLOCK, from
           the declaration itself through the end of current scope (the
           enclosing block, file, or "eval").  That is, the forms without a
           BLOCK are operative through the end of the current scope, just like
           the "my", "state", and "our" operators.  All unqualified dynamic
           identifiers in this scope will be in the given namespace, except
           where overridden by another "package" declaration or when they're
           one of the special identifiers that qualify into "main::", like
           "STDOUT", "ARGV", "ENV", and the punctuation variables.

           A package statement affects dynamic variables only, including those
           you've used "local" on, but not lexically-scoped variables, which
           are created with "my", "state", or "our".  Typically it would be
           the first declaration in a file included by "require" or "use".
           You can switch into a package in more than one place, since this
           only determines which default symbol table the compiler uses for
           the rest of that block.  You can refer to identifiers in other
           packages than the current one by prefixing the identifier with the
           package name and a double colon, as in $SomePack::var or
           "ThatPack::INPUT_HANDLE".  If package name is omitted, the "main"
           package as assumed.  That is, $::sail is equivalent to $main::sail
           (as well as to "$main'sail", still seen in ancient code, mostly
           from Perl 4).

           If VERSION is provided, "package" sets the $VERSION variable in the
           given namespace to a version object with the VERSION provided.
           VERSION must be a "strict" style version number as defined by the
           version module: a positive decimal number (integer or decimal-
           fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-decimal v-string
           with a leading 'v' character and at least three components.  You
           should set $VERSION only once per package.

           See "Packages" in perlmod for more information about packages,
           modules, and classes.  See perlsub for other scoping issues.

       __PACKAGE__
           A special token that returns the name of the package in which it
           occurs.

       pipe READHANDLE,WRITEHANDLE
           Opens a pair of connected pipes like the corresponding system call.
           Note that if you set up a loop of piped processes, deadlock can
           occur unless you are very careful.  In addition, note that Perl's
           pipes use IO buffering, so you may need to set $| to flush your
           WRITEHANDLE after each command, depending on the application.

           Returns true on success.

           See IPC::Open2, IPC::Open3, and "Bidirectional Communication with
           Another Process" in perlipc for examples of such things.

           On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on files, that flag is
           set on all newly opened file descriptors whose "fileno"s are higher
           than the current value of $^F (by default 2 for "STDERR").  See
           "$^F" in perlvar.

       pop ARRAY
       pop Pops and returns the last value of the array, shortening the array
           by one element.

           Returns the undefined value if the array is empty, although this
           may also happen at other times.  If ARRAY is omitted, pops the
           @ARGV array in the main program, but the @_ array in subroutines,
           just like "shift".

           Starting with Perl 5.14, an experimental feature allowed "pop" to
           take a scalar expression. This experiment has been deemed
           unsuccessful, and was removed as of Perl 5.24.

       pos SCALAR
       pos Returns the offset of where the last "m//g" search left off for the
           variable in question ($_ is used when the variable is not
           specified).  This offset is in characters unless the (no-longer-
           recommended) "use bytes" pragma is in effect, in which case the
           offset is in bytes.  Note that 0 is a valid match offset.  "undef"
           indicates that the search position is reset (usually due to match
           failure, but can also be because no match has yet been run on the
           scalar).

           "pos" directly accesses the location used by the regexp engine to
           store the offset, so assigning to "pos" will change that offset,
           and so will also influence the "\G" zero-width assertion in regular
           expressions.  Both of these effects take place for the next match,
           so you can't affect the position with "pos" during the current
           match, such as in "(?{pos() = 5})" or "s//pos() = 5/e".

           Setting "pos" also resets the matched with zero-length flag,
           described under "Repeated Patterns Matching a Zero-length
           Substring" in perlre.

           Because a failed "m//gc" match doesn't reset the offset, the return
           from "pos" won't change either in this case.  See perlre and
           perlop.

       print FILEHANDLE LIST
       print FILEHANDLE
       print LIST
       print
           Prints a string or a list of strings.  Returns true if successful.
           FILEHANDLE may be a scalar variable containing the name of or a
           reference to the filehandle, thus introducing one level of
           indirection.  (NOTE: If FILEHANDLE is a variable and the next token
           is a term, it may be misinterpreted as an operator unless you
           interpose a "+" or put parentheses around the arguments.)  If
           FILEHANDLE is omitted, prints to the last selected (see "select")
           output handle.  If LIST is omitted, prints $_ to the currently
           selected output handle.  To use FILEHANDLE alone to print the
           content of $_ to it, you must use a bareword filehandle like "FH",
           not an indirect one like $fh.  To set the default output handle to
           something other than STDOUT, use the select operation.

           The current value of $, (if any) is printed between each LIST item.
           The current value of "$\" (if any) is printed after the entire LIST
           has been printed.  Because print takes a LIST, anything in the LIST
           is evaluated in list context, including any subroutines whose
           return lists you pass to "print".  Be careful not to follow the
           print keyword with a left parenthesis unless you want the
           corresponding right parenthesis to terminate the arguments to the
           print; put parentheses around all arguments (or interpose a "+",
           but that doesn't look as good).

           If you're storing handles in an array or hash, or in general
           whenever you're using any expression more complex than a bareword
           handle or a plain, unsubscripted scalar variable to retrieve it,
           you will have to use a block returning the filehandle value
           instead, in which case the LIST may not be omitted:

               print { $files[$i] } "stuff\n";
               print { $OK ? *STDOUT : *STDERR } "stuff\n";

           Printing to a closed pipe or socket will generate a SIGPIPE signal.
           See perlipc for more on signal handling.

       printf FILEHANDLE FORMAT, LIST
       printf FILEHANDLE
       printf FORMAT, LIST
       printf
           Equivalent to "print FILEHANDLE sprintf(FORMAT, LIST)", except that
           "$\" (the output record separator) is not appended.  The FORMAT and
           the LIST are actually parsed as a single list.  The first argument
           of the list will be interpreted as the "printf" format.  This means
           that "printf(@_)" will use $_[0] as the format.  See sprintf for an
           explanation of the format argument.  If "use locale" (including
           "use locale ':not_characters'") is in effect and "POSIX::setlocale"
           has been called, the character used for the decimal separator in
           formatted floating-point numbers is affected by the "LC_NUMERIC"
           locale setting.  See perllocale and POSIX.

           For historical reasons, if you omit the list, $_ is used as the
           format; to use FILEHANDLE without a list, you must use a bareword
           filehandle like "FH", not an indirect one like $fh.  However, this
           will rarely do what you want; if $_ contains formatting codes, they
           will be replaced with the empty string and a warning will be
           emitted if warnings are enabled.  Just use "print" if you want to
           print the contents of $_.

           Don't fall into the trap of using a "printf" when a simple "print"
           would do.  The "print" is more efficient and less error prone.

       prototype FUNCTION
       prototype
           Returns the prototype of a function as a string (or "undef" if the
           function has no prototype).  FUNCTION is a reference to, or the
           name of, the function whose prototype you want to retrieve.  If
           FUNCTION is omitted, $_ is used.

           If FUNCTION is a string starting with "CORE::", the rest is taken
           as a name for a Perl builtin.  If the builtin's arguments cannot be
           adequately expressed by a prototype (such as "system"), "prototype"
           returns "undef", because the builtin does not really behave like a
           Perl function.  Otherwise, the string describing the equivalent
           prototype is returned.

       push ARRAY,LIST
           Treats ARRAY as a stack by appending the values of LIST to the end
           of ARRAY.  The length of ARRAY increases by the length of LIST.
           Has the same effect as

               for my $value (LIST) {
                   $ARRAY[++$#ARRAY] = $value;
               }

           but is more efficient.  Returns the number of elements in the array
           following the completed "push".

           Starting with Perl 5.14, an experimental feature allowed "push" to
           take a scalar expression. This experiment has been deemed
           unsuccessful, and was removed as of Perl 5.24.

       q/STRING/
       qq/STRING/
       qw/STRING/
       qx/STRING/
           Generalized quotes.  See "Quote-Like Operators" in perlop.

       qr/STRING/
           Regexp-like quote.  See "Regexp Quote-Like Operators" in perlop.

       quotemeta EXPR
       quotemeta
           Returns the value of EXPR with all the ASCII non-"word" characters
           backslashed.  (That is, all ASCII characters not matching
           "/[A-Za-z_0-9]/" will be preceded by a backslash in the returned
           string, regardless of any locale settings.)  This is the internal
           function implementing the "\Q" escape in double-quoted strings.
           (See below for the behavior on non-ASCII code points.)

           If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.

           quotemeta (and "\Q" ... "\E") are useful when interpolating strings
           into regular expressions, because by default an interpolated
           variable will be considered a mini-regular expression.  For
           example:

               my $sentence = 'The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog';
               my $substring = 'quick.*?fox';
               $sentence =~ s{$substring}{big bad wolf};

           Will cause $sentence to become 'The big bad wolf jumped over...'.

           On the other hand:

               my $sentence = 'The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog';
               my $substring = 'quick.*?fox';
               $sentence =~ s{\Q$substring\E}{big bad wolf};

           Or:

               my $sentence = 'The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog';
               my $substring = 'quick.*?fox';
               my $quoted_substring = quotemeta($substring);
               $sentence =~ s{$quoted_substring}{big bad wolf};

           Will both leave the sentence as is.  Normally, when accepting
           literal string input from the user, "quotemeta" or "\Q" must be
           used.

           In Perl v5.14, all non-ASCII characters are quoted in
           non-UTF-8-encoded strings, but not quoted in UTF-8 strings.

           Starting in Perl v5.16, Perl adopted a Unicode-defined strategy for
           quoting non-ASCII characters; the quoting of ASCII characters is
           unchanged.

           Also unchanged is the quoting of non-UTF-8 strings when outside the
           scope of a "use feature 'unicode_strings'", which is to quote all
           characters in the upper Latin1 range.  This provides complete
           backwards compatibility for old programs which do not use Unicode.
           (Note that "unicode_strings" is automatically enabled within the
           scope of a "usev5.12" or greater.)

           Within the scope of "use locale", all non-ASCII Latin1 code points
           are quoted whether the string is encoded as UTF-8 or not.  As
           mentioned above, locale does not affect the quoting of ASCII-range
           characters.  This protects against those locales where characters
           such as "|" are considered to be word characters.

           Otherwise, Perl quotes non-ASCII characters using an adaptation
           from Unicode (see <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr31/>).  The
           only code points that are quoted are those that have any of the
           Unicode properties:  Pattern_Syntax, Pattern_White_Space,
           White_Space, Default_Ignorable_Code_Point, or
           General_Category=Control.

           Of these properties, the two important ones are Pattern_Syntax and
           Pattern_White_Space.  They have been set up by Unicode for exactly
           this purpose of deciding which characters in a regular expression
           pattern should be quoted.  No character that can be in an
           identifier has these properties.

           Perl promises, that if we ever add regular expression pattern
           metacharacters to the dozen already defined ("\ | ( ) [ { ^ $ * + ?
           ."), that we will only use ones that have the Pattern_Syntax
           property.  Perl also promises, that if we ever add characters that
           are considered to be white space in regular expressions (currently
           mostly affected by "/x"), they will all have the
           Pattern_White_Space property.

           Unicode promises that the set of code points that have these two
           properties will never change, so something that is not quoted in
           v5.16 will never need to be quoted in any future Perl release.
           (Not all the code points that match Pattern_Syntax have actually
           had characters assigned to them; so there is room to grow, but they
           are quoted whether assigned or not.  Perl, of course, would never
           use an unassigned code point as an actual metacharacter.)

           Quoting characters that have the other 3 properties is done to
           enhance the readability of the regular expression and not because
           they actually need to be quoted for regular expression purposes
           (characters with the White_Space property are likely to be
           indistinguishable on the page or screen from those with the
           Pattern_White_Space property; and the other two properties contain
           non-printing characters).

       rand EXPR
       rand
           Returns a random fractional number greater than or equal to 0 and
           less than the value of EXPR.  (EXPR should be positive.)  If EXPR
           is omitted, the value 1 is used.  Currently EXPR with the value 0
           is also special-cased as 1 (this was undocumented before Perl 5.8.0
           and is subject to change in future versions of Perl).
           Automatically calls "srand" unless "srand" has already been called.
           See also "srand".

           Apply "int" to the value returned by "rand" if you want random
           integers instead of random fractional numbers.  For example,

               int(rand(10))

           returns a random integer between 0 and 9, inclusive.

           (Note: If your rand function consistently returns numbers that are
           too large or too small, then your version of Perl was probably
           compiled with the wrong number of RANDBITS.)

           "rand" is not cryptographically secure.  You should not rely on it
           in security-sensitive situations.  As of this writing, a number of
           third-party CPAN modules offer random number generators intended by
           their authors to be cryptographically secure, including:
           Data::Entropy, Crypt::Random, Math::Random::Secure, and
           Math::TrulyRandom.

       read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
       read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH
           Attempts to read LENGTH characters of data into variable SCALAR
           from the specified FILEHANDLE.  Returns the number of characters
           actually read, 0 at end of file, or undef if there was an error (in
           the latter case $! is also set).  SCALAR will be grown or shrunk so
           that the last character actually read is the last character of the
           scalar after the read.

           An OFFSET may be specified to place the read data at some place in
           the string other than the beginning.  A negative OFFSET specifies
           placement at that many characters counting backwards from the end
           of the string.  A positive OFFSET greater than the length of SCALAR
           results in the string being padded to the required size with "\0"
           bytes before the result of the read is appended.

           The call is implemented in terms of either Perl's or your system's
           native fread(3) library function.  To get a true read(2) system
           call, see sysread.

           Note the characters: depending on the status of the filehandle,
           either (8-bit) bytes or characters are read.  By default, all
           filehandles operate on bytes, but for example if the filehandle has
           been opened with the ":utf8" I/O layer (see "open", and the open
           pragma), the I/O will operate on UTF8-encoded Unicode characters,
           not bytes.  Similarly for the ":encoding" layer: in that case
           pretty much any characters can be read.

       readdir DIRHANDLE
           Returns the next directory entry for a directory opened by
           "opendir".  If used in list context, returns all the rest of the
           entries in the directory.  If there are no more entries, returns
           the undefined value in scalar context and the empty list in list
           context.

           If you're planning to filetest the return values out of a
           "readdir", you'd better prepend the directory in question.
           Otherwise, because we didn't "chdir" there, it would have been
           testing the wrong file.

               opendir(my $dh, $some_dir) || die "Can't opendir $some_dir: $!";
               my @dots = grep { /^\./ && -f "$some_dir/$_" } readdir($dh);
               closedir $dh;

           As of Perl 5.12 you can use a bare "readdir" in a "while" loop,
           which will set $_ on every iteration.  If either a "readdir"
           expression or an explicit assignment of a "readdir" expression to a
           scalar is used as a "while"/"for" condition, then the condition
           actually tests for definedness of the expression's value, not for
           its regular truth value.

               opendir(my $dh, $some_dir) || die "Can't open $some_dir: $!";
               while (readdir $dh) {
                   print "$some_dir/$_\n";
               }
               closedir $dh;

           To avoid confusing would-be users of your code who are running
           earlier versions of Perl with mysterious failures, put this sort of
           thing at the top of your file to signal that your code will work
           only on Perls of a recent vintage:

               use 5.012; # so readdir assigns to $_ in a lone while test

       readline EXPR
       readline
           Reads from the filehandle whose typeglob is contained in EXPR (or
           from *ARGV if EXPR is not provided).  In scalar context, each call
           reads and returns the next line until end-of-file is reached,
           whereupon the subsequent call returns "undef".  In list context,
           reads until end-of-file is reached and returns a list of lines.
           Note that the notion of "line" used here is whatever you may have
           defined with $/ (or $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR in English).  See "$/"
           in perlvar.

           When $/ is set to "undef", when "readline" is in scalar context
           (i.e., file slurp mode), and when an empty file is read, it returns
           '' the first time, followed by "undef" subsequently.

           This is the internal function implementing the "<EXPR>" operator,
           but you can use it directly.  The "<EXPR>" operator is discussed in
           more detail in "I/O Operators" in perlop.

               my $line = <STDIN>;
               my $line = readline(STDIN);    # same thing

           If "readline" encounters an operating system error, $! will be set
           with the corresponding error message.  It can be helpful to check
           $! when you are reading from filehandles you don't trust, such as a
           tty or a socket.  The following example uses the operator form of
           "readline" and dies if the result is not defined.

               while ( ! eof($fh) ) {
                   defined( $_ = readline $fh ) or die "readline failed: $!";
                   ...
               }

           Note that you have can't handle "readline" errors that way with the
           "ARGV" filehandle.  In that case, you have to open each element of
           @ARGV yourself since "eof" handles "ARGV" differently.

               foreach my $arg (@ARGV) {
                   open(my $fh, $arg) or warn "Can't open $arg: $!";

                   while ( ! eof($fh) ) {
                       defined( $_ = readline $fh )
                           or die "readline failed for $arg: $!";
                       ...
                   }
               }

           Like the "<EXPR>" operator, if a "readline" expression is used as
           the condition of a "while" or "for" loop, then it will be
           implicitly assigned to $_.  If either a "readline" expression or an
           explicit assignment of a "readline" expression to a scalar is used
           as a "while"/"for" condition, then the condition actually tests for
           definedness of the expression's value, not for its regular truth
           value.

       readlink EXPR
       readlink
           Returns the value of a symbolic link, if symbolic links are
           implemented.  If not, raises an exception.  If there is a system
           error, returns the undefined value and sets $! (errno).  If EXPR is
           omitted, uses $_.

           Portability issues: "readlink" in perlport.

       readpipe EXPR
       readpipe
           EXPR is executed as a system command.  The collected standard
           output of the command is returned.  In scalar context, it comes
           back as a single (potentially multi-line) string.  In list context,
           returns a list of lines (however you've defined lines with $/ (or
           $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR in English)).  This is the internal
           function implementing the "qx/EXPR/" operator, but you can use it
           directly.  The "qx/EXPR/" operator is discussed in more detail in
           "I/O Operators" in perlop.  If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.

       recv SOCKET,SCALAR,LENGTH,FLAGS
           Receives a message on a socket.  Attempts to receive LENGTH
           characters of data into variable SCALAR from the specified SOCKET
           filehandle.  SCALAR will be grown or shrunk to the length actually
           read.  Takes the same flags as the system call of the same name.
           Returns the address of the sender if SOCKET's protocol supports
           this; returns an empty string otherwise.  If there's an error,
           returns the undefined value.  This call is actually implemented in
           terms of the recvfrom(2) system call.  See "UDP: Message Passing"
           in perlipc for examples.

           Note that if the socket has been marked as ":utf8", "recv" will
           throw an exception.  The ":encoding(...)" layer implicitly
           introduces the ":utf8" layer.  See "binmode".

       redo LABEL
       redo EXPR
       redo
           The "redo" command restarts the loop block without evaluating the
           conditional again.  The "continue" block, if any, is not executed.
           If the LABEL is omitted, the command refers to the innermost
           enclosing loop.  The "redo EXPR" form, available starting in Perl
           5.18.0, allows a label name to be computed at run time, and is
           otherwise identical to "redo LABEL".  Programs that want to lie to
           themselves about what was just input normally use this command:

               # a simpleminded Pascal comment stripper
               # (warning: assumes no { or } in strings)
               LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
                   while (s|({.*}.*){.*}|$1 |) {}
                   s|{.*}| |;
                   if (s|{.*| |) {
                       my $front = $_;
                       while (<STDIN>) {
                           if (/}/) {  # end of comment?
                               s|^|$front\{|;
                               redo LINE;
                           }
                       }
                   }
                   print;
               }

           "redo" cannot return a value from a block that typically returns a
           value, such as "eval {}", "sub {}", or "do {}". It will perform its
           flow control behavior, which precludes any return value. It should
           not be used to exit a "grep" or "map" operation.

           Note that a block by itself is semantically identical to a loop
           that executes once.  Thus "redo" inside such a block will
           effectively turn it into a looping construct.

           See also "continue" for an illustration of how "last", "next", and
           "redo" work.

           Unlike most named operators, this has the same precedence as
           assignment.  It is also exempt from the looks-like-a-function rule,
           so "redo ("foo")."bar"" will cause "bar" to be part of the argument
           to "redo".

       ref EXPR
       ref Examines the value of EXPR, expecting it to be a reference, and
           returns a string giving information about the reference and the
           type of referent.  If EXPR is not specified, $_ will be used.

           If the operand is not a reference, then the empty string will be
           returned.  An empty string will only be returned in this situation.
           "ref" is often useful to just test whether a value is a reference,
           which can be done by comparing the result to the empty string.  It
           is a common mistake to use the result of "ref" directly as a truth
           value: this goes wrong because 0 (which is false) can be returned
           for a reference.

           If the operand is a reference to a blessed object, then the name of
           the class into which the referent is blessed will be returned.
           "ref" doesn't care what the physical type of the referent is;
           blessing takes precedence over such concerns.  Beware that exact
           comparison of "ref" results against a class name doesn't perform a
           class membership test: a class's members also include objects
           blessed into subclasses, for which "ref" will return the name of
           the subclass.  Also beware that class names can clash with the
           built-in type names (described below).

           If the operand is a reference to an unblessed object, then the
           return value indicates the type of object.  If the unblessed
           referent is not a scalar, then the return value will be one of the
           strings "ARRAY", "HASH", "CODE", "FORMAT", or "IO", indicating only
           which kind of object it is.  If the unblessed referent is a scalar,
           then the return value will be one of the strings "SCALAR",
           "VSTRING", "REF", "GLOB", "LVALUE", or "REGEXP", depending on the
           kind of value the scalar currently has.   But note that "qr//"
           scalars are created already blessed, so "ref qr/.../" will likely
           return "Regexp".  Beware that these built-in type names can also be
           used as class names, so "ref" returning one of these names doesn't
           unambiguously indicate that the referent is of the kind to which
           the name refers.

           The ambiguity between built-in type names and class names
           significantly limits the utility of "ref".  For unambiguous
           information, use "Scalar::Util::blessed()" for information about
           blessing, and "Scalar::Util::reftype()" for information about
           physical types.  Use the "isa" method for class membership tests,
           though one must be sure of blessedness before attempting a method
           call.

           See also perlref and perlobj.

       rename OLDNAME,NEWNAME
           Changes the name of a file; an existing file NEWNAME will be
           clobbered.  Returns true for success, false otherwise.

           Behavior of this function varies wildly depending on your system
           implementation.  For example, it will usually not work across file
           system boundaries, even though the system mv command sometimes
           compensates for this.  Other restrictions include whether it works
           on directories, open files, or pre-existing files.  Check perlport
           and either the rename(2) manpage or equivalent system documentation
           for details.

           For a platform independent "move" function look at the File::Copy
           module.

           Portability issues: "rename" in perlport.

       require VERSION
       require EXPR
       require
           Demands a version of Perl specified by VERSION, or demands some
           semantics specified by EXPR or by $_ if EXPR is not supplied.

           VERSION may be either a literal such as v5.24.1, which will be
           compared to $^V (or $PERL_VERSION in English), or a numeric
           argument of the form 5.024001, which will be compared to $]. An
           exception is raised if VERSION is greater than the version of the
           current Perl interpreter.  Compare with "use", which can do a
           similar check at compile time.

           Specifying VERSION as a numeric argument of the form 5.024001
           should generally be avoided as older less readable syntax compared
           to v5.24.1. Before perl 5.8.0 (released in 2002), the more verbose
           numeric form was the only supported syntax, which is why you might
           see it in older code.

               require v5.24.1;    # run time version check
               require 5.24.1;     # ditto
               require 5.024_001;  # ditto; older syntax compatible
                                     with perl 5.6

           Otherwise, "require" demands that a library file be included if it
           hasn't already been included.  The file is included via the do-FILE
           mechanism, which is essentially just a variety of "eval" with the
           caveat that lexical variables in the invoking script will be
           invisible to the included code.  If it were implemented in pure
           Perl, it would have semantics similar to the following:

               use Carp 'croak';
               use version;

               sub require {
                   my ($filename) = @_;
                   if ( my $version = eval { version->parse($filename) } ) {
                       if ( $version > $^V ) {
                          my $vn = $version->normal;
                          croak "Perl $vn required--this is only $^V, stopped";
                       }
                       return 1;
                   }

                   if (exists $INC{$filename}) {
                       return 1 if $INC{$filename};
                       croak "Compilation failed in require";
                   }

                   foreach $prefix (@INC) {
                       if (ref($prefix)) {
                           #... do other stuff - see text below ....
                       }
                       # (see text below about possible appending of .pmc
                       # suffix to $filename)
                       my $realfilename = "$prefix/$filename";
                       next if ! -e $realfilename || -d _ || -b _;
                       $INC{$filename} = $realfilename;
                       my $result = do($realfilename);
                                    # but run in caller's namespace

                       if (!defined $result) {
                           $INC{$filename} = undef;
                           croak $@ ? "$@Compilation failed in require"
                                    : "Can't locate $filename: $!\n";
                       }
                       if (!$result) {
                           delete $INC{$filename};
                           croak "$filename did not return true value";
                       }
                       $! = 0;
                       return $result;
                   }
                   croak "Can't locate $filename in \@INC ...";
               }

           Note that the file will not be included twice under the same
           specified name.

           The file must return true as the last statement to indicate
           successful execution of any initialization code, so it's customary
           to end such a file with "1;" unless you're sure it'll return true
           otherwise.  But it's better just to put the "1;", in case you add
           more statements.

           If EXPR is a bareword, "require" assumes a .pm extension and
           replaces "::" with "/" in the filename for you, to make it easy to
           load standard modules.  This form of loading of modules does not
           risk altering your namespace, however it will autovivify the stash
           for the required module.

           In other words, if you try this:

                   require Foo::Bar;     # a splendid bareword

           The require function will actually look for the Foo/Bar.pm file in
           the directories specified in the @INC array, and it will autovivify
           the "Foo::Bar::" stash at compile time.

           But if you try this:

                   my $class = 'Foo::Bar';
                   require $class;       # $class is not a bareword
               #or
                   require "Foo::Bar";   # not a bareword because of the ""

           The require function will look for the Foo::Bar file in the @INC
           array and will complain about not finding Foo::Bar there.  In this
           case you can do:

                   eval "require $class";

           or you could do

                   require "Foo/Bar.pm";

           Neither of these forms will autovivify any stashes at compile time
           and only have run time effects.

           Now that you understand how "require" looks for files with a
           bareword argument, there is a little extra functionality going on
           behind the scenes.  Before "require" looks for a .pm extension, it
           will first look for a similar filename with a .pmc extension.  If
           this file is found, it will be loaded in place of any file ending
           in a .pm extension. This applies to both the explicit "require
           "Foo/Bar.pm";" form and the "require Foo::Bar;" form.

           You can also insert hooks into the import facility by putting Perl
           code directly into the @INC array.  There are three forms of hooks:
           subroutine references, array references, and blessed objects.

           Subroutine references are the simplest case.  When the inclusion
           system walks through @INC and encounters a subroutine, this
           subroutine gets called with two parameters, the first a reference
           to itself, and the second the name of the file to be included
           (e.g., Foo/Bar.pm).  The subroutine should return either nothing or
           else a list of up to four values in the following order:

           1.  A reference to a scalar, containing any initial source code to
               prepend to the file or generator output.

           2.  A filehandle, from which the file will be read.

           3.  A reference to a subroutine.  If there is no filehandle
               (previous item), then this subroutine is expected to generate
               one line of source code per call, writing the line into $_ and
               returning 1, then finally at end of file returning 0.  If there
               is a filehandle, then the subroutine will be called to act as a
               simple source filter, with the line as read in $_.  Again,
               return 1 for each valid line, and 0 after all lines have been
               returned.  For historical reasons the subroutine will receive a
               meaningless argument (in fact always the numeric value zero) as
               $_[0].

           4.  Optional state for the subroutine.  The state is passed in as
               $_[1].

           If an empty list, "undef", or nothing that matches the first 3
           values above is returned, then "require" looks at the remaining
           elements of @INC.  Note that this filehandle must be a real
           filehandle (strictly a typeglob or reference to a typeglob, whether
           blessed or unblessed); tied filehandles will be ignored and
           processing will stop there.

           If the hook is an array reference, its first element must be a
           subroutine reference.  This subroutine is called as above, but the
           first parameter is the array reference.  This lets you indirectly
           pass arguments to the subroutine.

           In other words, you can write:

               push @INC, \&my_sub;
               sub my_sub {
                   my ($coderef, $filename) = @_;  # $coderef is \&my_sub
                   ...
               }

           or:

               push @INC, [ \&my_sub, $x, $y, ... ];
               sub my_sub {
                   my ($arrayref, $filename) = @_;
                   # Retrieve $x, $y, ...
                   my (undef, @parameters) = @$arrayref;
                   ...
               }

           If the hook is an object, it must provide an "INC" method that will
           be called as above, the first parameter being the object itself.
           (Note that you must fully qualify the sub's name, as unqualified
           "INC" is always forced into package "main".)  Here is a typical
           code layout:

               # In Foo.pm
               package Foo;
               sub new { ... }
               sub Foo::INC {
                   my ($self, $filename) = @_;
                   ...
               }

               # In the main program
               push @INC, Foo->new(...);

           These hooks are also permitted to set the %INC entry corresponding
           to the files they have loaded.  See "%INC" in perlvar.

           For a yet-more-powerful import facility, see "use" and perlmod.

       reset EXPR
       reset
           Generally used in a "continue" block at the end of a loop to clear
           variables and reset "m?pattern?" searches so that they work again.
           The expression is interpreted as a list of single characters
           (hyphens allowed for ranges).  All variables (scalars, arrays, and
           hashes) in the current package beginning with one of those letters
           are reset to their pristine state.  If the expression is omitted,
           one-match searches ("m?pattern?") are reset to match again.  Only
           resets variables or searches in the current package.  Always
           returns 1.  Examples:

               reset 'X';      # reset all X variables
               reset 'a-z';    # reset lower case variables
               reset;          # just reset m?one-time? searches

           Resetting "A-Z" is not recommended because you'll wipe out your
           @ARGV and @INC arrays and your %ENV hash.

           Resets only package variables; lexical variables are unaffected,
           but they clean themselves up on scope exit anyway, so you'll
           probably want to use them instead.  See "my".

       return EXPR
       return
           Returns from a subroutine, "eval", "do FILE", "sort" block or regex
           eval block (but not a "grep" or "map" block) with the value given
           in EXPR.  Evaluation of EXPR may be in list, scalar, or void
           context, depending on how the return value will be used, and the
           context may vary from one execution to the next (see "wantarray").
           If no EXPR is given, returns an empty list in list context, the
           undefined value in scalar context, and (of course) nothing at all
           in void context.

           (In the absence of an explicit "return", a subroutine, "eval", or
           "do FILE" automatically returns the value of the last expression
           evaluated.)

           Unlike most named operators, this is also exempt from the looks-
           like-a-function rule, so "return ("foo")."bar"" will cause "bar" to
           be part of the argument to "return".

       reverse LIST
           In list context, returns a list value consisting of the elements of
           LIST in the opposite order.  In scalar context, concatenates the
           elements of LIST and returns a string value with all characters in
           the opposite order.

               print join(", ", reverse "world", "Hello"); # Hello, world

               print scalar reverse "dlrow ,", "olleH";    # Hello, world

           Used without arguments in scalar context, "reverse" reverses $_.

               $_ = "dlrow ,olleH";
               print reverse;                         # No output, list context
               print scalar reverse;                  # Hello, world

           Note that reversing an array to itself (as in "@a = reverse @a")
           will preserve non-existent elements whenever possible; i.e., for
           non-magical arrays or for tied arrays with "EXISTS" and "DELETE"
           methods.

           This operator is also handy for inverting a hash, although there
           are some caveats.  If a value is duplicated in the original hash,
           only one of those can be represented as a key in the inverted hash.
           Also, this has to unwind one hash and build a whole new one, which
           may take some time on a large hash, such as from a DBM file.

               my %by_name = reverse %by_address;  # Invert the hash

       rewinddir DIRHANDLE
           Sets the current position to the beginning of the directory for the
           "readdir" routine on DIRHANDLE.

           Portability issues: "rewinddir" in perlport.

       rindex STR,SUBSTR,POSITION
       rindex STR,SUBSTR
           Works just like "index" except that it returns the position of the
           last occurrence of SUBSTR in STR.  If POSITION is specified,
           returns the last occurrence beginning at or before that position.

       rmdir FILENAME
       rmdir
           Deletes the directory specified by FILENAME if that directory is
           empty.  If it succeeds it returns true; otherwise it returns false
           and sets $! (errno).  If FILENAME is omitted, uses $_.

           To remove a directory tree recursively ("rm -rf" on Unix) look at
           the "rmtree" function of the File::Path module.

       s///
           The substitution operator.  See "Regexp Quote-Like Operators" in
           perlop.

       say FILEHANDLE LIST
       say FILEHANDLE
       say LIST
       say Just like "print", but implicitly appends a newline.  "say LIST" is
           simply an abbreviation for "{ local $\ = "\n"; print LIST }".  To
           use FILEHANDLE without a LIST to print the contents of $_ to it,
           you must use a bareword filehandle like "FH", not an indirect one
           like $fh.

           "say" is available only if the "say" feature is enabled or if it is
           prefixed with "CORE::".  The "say" feature is enabled automatically
           with a "use v5.10" (or higher) declaration in the current scope.

       scalar EXPR
           Forces EXPR to be interpreted in scalar context and returns the
           value of EXPR.

               my @counts = ( scalar @a, scalar @b, scalar @c );

           There is no equivalent operator to force an expression to be
           interpolated in list context because in practice, this is never
           needed.  If you really wanted to do so, however, you could use the
           construction "@{[ (some expression) ]}", but usually a simple
           "(some expression)" suffices.

           Because "scalar" is a unary operator, if you accidentally use a
           parenthesized list for the EXPR, this behaves as a scalar comma
           expression, evaluating all but the last element in void context and
           returning the final element evaluated in scalar context.  This is
           seldom what you want.

           The following single statement:

               print uc(scalar(foo(), $bar)), $baz;

           is the moral equivalent of these two:

               foo();
               print(uc($bar), $baz);

           See perlop for more details on unary operators and the comma
           operator, and perldata for details on evaluating a hash in scalar
           contex.

       seek FILEHANDLE,POSITION,WHENCE
           Sets FILEHANDLE's position, just like the fseek(3) call of C
           "stdio".  FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the
           name of the filehandle.  The values for WHENCE are 0 to set the new
           position in bytes to POSITION; 1 to set it to the current position
           plus POSITION; and 2 to set it to EOF plus POSITION, typically
           negative.  For WHENCE you may use the constants "SEEK_SET",
           "SEEK_CUR", and "SEEK_END" (start of the file, current position,
           end of the file) from the Fcntl module.  Returns 1 on success,
           false otherwise.

           Note the emphasis on bytes: even if the filehandle has been set to
           operate on characters (for example using the ":encoding(UTF-8)" I/O
           layer), the "seek", "tell", and "sysseek" family of functions use
           byte offsets, not character offsets, because seeking to a character
           offset would be very slow in a UTF-8 file.

           If you want to position the file for "sysread" or "syswrite", don't
           use "seek", because buffering makes its effect on the file's read-
           write position unpredictable and non-portable.  Use "sysseek"
           instead.

           Due to the rules and rigors of ANSI C, on some systems you have to
           do a seek whenever you switch between reading and writing.  Amongst
           other things, this may have the effect of calling stdio's
           clearerr(3).  A WHENCE of 1 ("SEEK_CUR") is useful for not moving
           the file position:

               seek($fh, 0, 1);

           This is also useful for applications emulating "tail -f".  Once you
           hit EOF on your read and then sleep for a while, you (probably)
           have to stick in a dummy "seek" to reset things.  The "seek"
           doesn't change the position, but it does clear the end-of-file
           condition on the handle, so that the next "readline FILE" makes
           Perl try again to read something.  (We hope.)

           If that doesn't work (some I/O implementations are particularly
           cantankerous), you might need something like this:

               for (;;) {
                   for ($curpos = tell($fh); $_ = readline($fh);
                        $curpos = tell($fh)) {
                       # search for some stuff and put it into files
                   }
                   sleep($for_a_while);
                   seek($fh, $curpos, 0);
               }

       seekdir DIRHANDLE,POS
           Sets the current position for the "readdir" routine on DIRHANDLE.
           POS must be a value returned by "telldir".  "seekdir" also has the
           same caveats about possible directory compaction as the
           corresponding system library routine.

       select FILEHANDLE
       select
           Returns the currently selected filehandle.  If FILEHANDLE is
           supplied, sets the new current default filehandle for output.  This
           has two effects: first, a "write" or a "print" without a filehandle
           default to this FILEHANDLE.  Second, references to variables
           related to output will refer to this output channel.

           For example, to set the top-of-form format for more than one output
           channel, you might do the following:

               select(REPORT1);
               $^ = 'report1_top';
               select(REPORT2);
               $^ = 'report2_top';

           FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the name of the
           actual filehandle.  Thus:

               my $oldfh = select(STDERR); $| = 1; select($oldfh);

           Some programmers may prefer to think of filehandles as objects with
           methods, preferring to write the last example as:

               STDERR->autoflush(1);

           (Prior to Perl version 5.14, you have to "use IO::Handle;"
           explicitly first.)

           Portability issues: "select" in perlport.

       select RBITS,WBITS,EBITS,TIMEOUT
           This calls the select(2) syscall with the bit masks specified,
           which can be constructed using "fileno" and "vec", along these
           lines:

               my $rin = my $win = my $ein = '';
               vec($rin, fileno(STDIN),  1) = 1;
               vec($win, fileno(STDOUT), 1) = 1;
               $ein = $rin | $win;

           If you want to select on many filehandles, you may wish to write a
           subroutine like this:

               sub fhbits {
                   my @fhlist = @_;
                   my $bits = "";
                   for my $fh (@fhlist) {
                       vec($bits, fileno($fh), 1) = 1;
                   }
                   return $bits;
               }
               my $rin = fhbits(\*STDIN, $tty, $mysock);

           The usual idiom is:

            my ($nfound, $timeleft) =
              select(my $rout = $rin, my $wout = $win, my $eout = $ein,
                                                                     $timeout);

           or to block until something becomes ready just do this

            my $nfound =
              select(my $rout = $rin, my $wout = $win, my $eout = $ein, undef);

           Most systems do not bother to return anything useful in $timeleft,
           so calling "select" in scalar context just returns $nfound.

           Any of the bit masks can also be "undef".  The timeout, if
           specified, is in seconds, which may be fractional.  Note: not all
           implementations are capable of returning the $timeleft.  If not,
           they always return $timeleft equal to the supplied $timeout.

           You can effect a sleep of 250 milliseconds this way:

               select(undef, undef, undef, 0.25);

           Note that whether "select" gets restarted after signals (say,
           SIGALRM) is implementation-dependent.  See also perlport for notes
           on the portability of "select".

           On error, "select" behaves just like select(2): it returns "-1" and
           sets $!.

           On some Unixes, select(2) may report a socket file descriptor as
           "ready for reading" even when no data is available, and thus any
           subsequent "read" would block.  This can be avoided if you always
           use "O_NONBLOCK" on the socket.  See select(2) and fcntl(2) for
           further details.

           The standard "IO::Select" module provides a user-friendlier
           interface to "select", mostly because it does all the bit-mask work
           for you.

           WARNING: One should not attempt to mix buffered I/O (like "read" or
           "readline") with "select", except as permitted by POSIX, and even
           then only on POSIX systems.  You have to use "sysread" instead.

           Portability issues: "select" in perlport.

       semctl ID,SEMNUM,CMD,ARG
           Calls the System V IPC function semctl(2).  You'll probably have to
           say

               use IPC::SysV;

           first to get the correct constant definitions.  If CMD is IPC_STAT
           or GETALL, then ARG must be a variable that will hold the returned
           semid_ds structure or semaphore value array.  Returns like "ioctl":
           the undefined value for error, ""0 but true"" for zero, or the
           actual return value otherwise.  The ARG must consist of a vector of
           native short integers, which may be created with
           "pack("s!",(0)x$nsem)".  See also "SysV IPC" in perlipc and the
           documentation for "IPC::SysV" and "IPC::Semaphore".

           Portability issues: "semctl" in perlport.

       semget KEY,NSEMS,FLAGS
           Calls the System V IPC function semget(2).  Returns the semaphore
           id, or the undefined value on error.  See also "SysV IPC" in
           perlipc and the documentation for "IPC::SysV" and "IPC::Semaphore".

           Portability issues: "semget" in perlport.

       semop KEY,OPSTRING
           Calls the System V IPC function semop(2) for semaphore operations
           such as signalling and waiting.  OPSTRING must be a packed array of
           semop structures.  Each semop structure can be generated with
           "pack("s!3", $semnum, $semop, $semflag)".  The length of OPSTRING
           implies the number of semaphore operations.  Returns true if
           successful, false on error.  As an example, the following code
           waits on semaphore $semnum of semaphore id $semid:

               my $semop = pack("s!3", $semnum, -1, 0);
               die "Semaphore trouble: $!\n" unless semop($semid, $semop);

           To signal the semaphore, replace "-1" with 1.  See also "SysV IPC"
           in perlipc and the documentation for "IPC::SysV" and
           "IPC::Semaphore".

           Portability issues: "semop" in perlport.

       send SOCKET,MSG,FLAGS,TO
       send SOCKET,MSG,FLAGS
           Sends a message on a socket.  Attempts to send the scalar MSG to
           the SOCKET filehandle.  Takes the same flags as the system call of
           the same name.  On unconnected sockets, you must specify a
           destination to send to, in which case it does a sendto(2) syscall.
           Returns the number of characters sent, or the undefined value on
           error.  The sendmsg(2) syscall is currently unimplemented.  See
           "UDP: Message Passing" in perlipc for examples.

           Note that if the socket has been marked as ":utf8", "send" will
           throw an exception.  The ":encoding(...)" layer implicitly
           introduces the ":utf8" layer.  See "binmode".

       setpgrp PID,PGRP
           Sets the current process group for the specified PID, 0 for the
           current process.  Raises an exception when used on a machine that
           doesn't implement POSIX setpgid(2) or BSD setpgrp(2).  If the
           arguments are omitted, it defaults to "0,0".  Note that the BSD 4.2
           version of "setpgrp" does not accept any arguments, so only
           "setpgrp(0,0)" is portable.  See also "POSIX::setsid()".

           Portability issues: "setpgrp" in perlport.

       setpriority WHICH,WHO,PRIORITY
           Sets the current priority for a process, a process group, or a
           user.  (See setpriority(2).)  Raises an exception when used on a
           machine that doesn't implement setpriority(2).

           "WHICH" can be any of "PRIO_PROCESS", "PRIO_PGRP" or "PRIO_USER"
           imported from "RESOURCE CONSTANTS" in POSIX.

           Portability issues: "setpriority" in perlport.

       setsockopt SOCKET,LEVEL,OPTNAME,OPTVAL
           Sets the socket option requested.  Returns "undef" on error.  Use
           integer constants provided by the "Socket" module for LEVEL and
           OPNAME.  Values for LEVEL can also be obtained from getprotobyname.
           OPTVAL might either be a packed string or an integer.  An integer
           OPTVAL is shorthand for pack("i", OPTVAL).

           An example disabling Nagle's algorithm on a socket:

               use Socket qw(IPPROTO_TCP TCP_NODELAY);
               setsockopt($socket, IPPROTO_TCP, TCP_NODELAY, 1);

           Portability issues: "setsockopt" in perlport.

       shift ARRAY
       shift
           Shifts the first value of the array off and returns it, shortening
           the array by 1 and moving everything down.  If there are no
           elements in the array, returns the undefined value.  If ARRAY is
           omitted, shifts the @_ array within the lexical scope of
           subroutines and formats, and the @ARGV array outside a subroutine
           and also within the lexical scopes established by the "eval
           STRING", "BEGIN {}", "INIT {}", "CHECK {}", "UNITCHECK {}", and
           "END {}" constructs.

           Starting with Perl 5.14, an experimental feature allowed "shift" to
           take a scalar expression. This experiment has been deemed
           unsuccessful, and was removed as of Perl 5.24.

           See also "unshift", "push", and "pop".  "shift" and "unshift" do
           the same thing to the left end of an array that "pop" and "push" do
           to the right end.

       shmctl ID,CMD,ARG
           Calls the System V IPC function shmctl.  You'll probably have to
           say

               use IPC::SysV;

           first to get the correct constant definitions.  If CMD is
           "IPC_STAT", then ARG must be a variable that will hold the returned
           "shmid_ds" structure.  Returns like ioctl: "undef" for error; "0
           but true" for zero; and the actual return value otherwise.  See
           also "SysV IPC" in perlipc and the documentation for "IPC::SysV".

           Portability issues: "shmctl" in perlport.

       shmget KEY,SIZE,FLAGS
           Calls the System V IPC function shmget.  Returns the shared memory
           segment id, or "undef" on error.  See also "SysV IPC" in perlipc
           and the documentation for "IPC::SysV".

           Portability issues: "shmget" in perlport.

       shmread ID,VAR,POS,SIZE
       shmwrite ID,STRING,POS,SIZE
           Reads or writes the System V shared memory segment ID starting at
           position POS for size SIZE by attaching to it, copying in/out, and
           detaching from it.  When reading, VAR must be a variable that will
           hold the data read.  When writing, if STRING is too long, only SIZE
           bytes are used; if STRING is too short, nulls are written to fill
           out SIZE bytes.  Return true if successful, false on error.
           "shmread" taints the variable.  See also "SysV IPC" in perlipc and
           the documentation for "IPC::SysV" and the "IPC::Shareable" module
           from CPAN.

           Portability issues: "shmread" in perlport and "shmwrite" in
           perlport.

       shutdown SOCKET,HOW
           Shuts down a socket connection in the manner indicated by HOW,
           which has the same interpretation as in the syscall of the same
           name.

               shutdown($socket, 0);    # I/we have stopped reading data
               shutdown($socket, 1);    # I/we have stopped writing data
               shutdown($socket, 2);    # I/we have stopped using this socket

           This is useful with sockets when you want to tell the other side
           you're done writing but not done reading, or vice versa.  It's also
           a more insistent form of close because it also disables the file
           descriptor in any forked copies in other processes.

           Returns 1 for success; on error, returns "undef" if the first
           argument is not a valid filehandle, or returns 0 and sets $! for
           any other failure.

       sin EXPR
       sin Returns the sine of EXPR (expressed in radians).  If EXPR is
           omitted, returns sine of $_.

           For the inverse sine operation, you may use the "Math::Trig::asin"
           function, or use this relation:

               sub asin { atan2($_[0], sqrt(1 - $_[0] * $_[0])) }

       sleep EXPR
       sleep
           Causes the script to sleep for (integer) EXPR seconds, or forever
           if no argument is given.  Returns the integer number of seconds
           actually slept.

           May be interrupted if the process receives a signal such as
           "SIGALRM".

               eval {
                   local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "Alarm!\n" };
                   sleep;
               };
               die $@ unless $@ eq "Alarm!\n";

           You probably cannot mix "alarm" and "sleep" calls, because "sleep"
           is often implemented using "alarm".

           On some older systems, it may sleep up to a full second less than
           what you requested, depending on how it counts seconds.  Most
           modern systems always sleep the full amount.  They may appear to
           sleep longer than that, however, because your process might not be
           scheduled right away in a busy multitasking system.

           For delays of finer granularity than one second, the Time::HiRes
           module (from CPAN, and starting from Perl 5.8 part of the standard
           distribution) provides "usleep".  You may also use Perl's four-
           argument version of "select" leaving the first three arguments
           undefined, or you might be able to use the "syscall" interface to
           access setitimer(2) if your system supports it.  See perlfaq8 for
           details.

           See also the POSIX module's "pause" function.

       socket SOCKET,DOMAIN,TYPE,PROTOCOL
           Opens a socket of the specified kind and attaches it to filehandle
           SOCKET.  DOMAIN, TYPE, and PROTOCOL are specified the same as for
           the syscall of the same name.  You should "use Socket" first to get
           the proper definitions imported.  See the examples in "Sockets:
           Client/Server Communication" in perlipc.

           On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on files, the flag
           will be set for the newly opened file descriptor, as determined by
           the value of $^F.  See "$^F" in perlvar.

       socketpair SOCKET1,SOCKET2,DOMAIN,TYPE,PROTOCOL
           Creates an unnamed pair of sockets in the specified domain, of the
           specified type.  DOMAIN, TYPE, and PROTOCOL are specified the same
           as for the syscall of the same name.  If unimplemented, raises an
           exception.  Returns true if successful.

           On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on files, the flag
           will be set for the newly opened file descriptors, as determined by
           the value of $^F.  See "$^F" in perlvar.

           Some systems define "pipe" in terms of "socketpair", in which a
           call to "pipe($rdr, $wtr)" is essentially:

               use Socket;
               socketpair(my $rdr, my $wtr, AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, PF_UNSPEC);
               shutdown($rdr, 1);        # no more writing for reader
               shutdown($wtr, 0);        # no more reading for writer

           See perlipc for an example of socketpair use.  Perl 5.8 and later
           will emulate socketpair using IP sockets to localhost if your
           system implements sockets but not socketpair.

           Portability issues: "socketpair" in perlport.

       sort SUBNAME LIST
       sort BLOCK LIST
       sort LIST
           In list context, this sorts the LIST and returns the sorted list
           value.  In scalar context, the behaviour of "sort" is undefined.

           If SUBNAME or BLOCK is omitted, "sort"s in standard string
           comparison order.  If SUBNAME is specified, it gives the name of a
           subroutine that returns an integer less than, equal to, or greater
           than 0, depending on how the elements of the list are to be
           ordered.  (The "<=>" and "cmp" operators are extremely useful in
           such routines.)  SUBNAME may be a scalar variable name
           (unsubscripted), in which case the value provides the name of (or a
           reference to) the actual subroutine to use.  In place of a SUBNAME,
           you can provide a BLOCK as an anonymous, in-line sort subroutine.

           If the subroutine's prototype is "($$)", the elements to be
           compared are passed by reference in @_, as for a normal subroutine.
           This is slower than unprototyped subroutines, where the elements to
           be compared are passed into the subroutine as the package global
           variables $a and $b (see example below).

           If the subroutine is an XSUB, the elements to be compared are
           pushed on to the stack, the way arguments are usually passed to
           XSUBs.  $a and $b are not set.

           The values to be compared are always passed by reference and should
           not be modified.

           You also cannot exit out of the sort block or subroutine using any
           of the loop control operators described in perlsyn or with "goto".

           When "use locale" (but not "use locale ':not_characters'") is in
           effect, "sort LIST" sorts LIST according to the current collation
           locale.  See perllocale.

           "sort" returns aliases into the original list, much as a for loop's
           index variable aliases the list elements.  That is, modifying an
           element of a list returned by "sort" (for example, in a "foreach",
           "map" or "grep") actually modifies the element in the original
           list.  This is usually something to be avoided when writing clear
           code.

           Historically Perl has varied in whether sorting is stable by
           default.  If stability matters, it can be controlled explicitly by
           using the sort pragma.

           Examples:

               # sort lexically
               my @articles = sort @files;

               # same thing, but with explicit sort routine
               my @articles = sort {$a cmp $b} @files;

               # now case-insensitively
               my @articles = sort {fc($a) cmp fc($b)} @files;

               # same thing in reversed order
               my @articles = sort {$b cmp $a} @files;

               # sort numerically ascending
               my @articles = sort {$a <=> $b} @files;

               # sort numerically descending
               my @articles = sort {$b <=> $a} @files;

               # this sorts the %age hash by value instead of key
               # using an in-line function
               my @eldest = sort { $age{$b} <=> $age{$a} } keys %age;

               # sort using explicit subroutine name
               sub byage {
                   $age{$a} <=> $age{$b};  # presuming numeric
               }
               my @sortedclass = sort byage @class;

               sub backwards { $b cmp $a }
               my @harry  = qw(dog cat x Cain Abel);
               my @george = qw(gone chased yz Punished Axed);
               print sort @harry;
                   # prints AbelCaincatdogx
               print sort backwards @harry;
                   # prints xdogcatCainAbel
               print sort @george, 'to', @harry;
                   # prints AbelAxedCainPunishedcatchaseddoggonetoxyz

               # inefficiently sort by descending numeric compare using
               # the first integer after the first = sign, or the
               # whole record case-insensitively otherwise

               my @new = sort {
                   ($b =~ /=(\d+)/)[0] <=> ($a =~ /=(\d+)/)[0]
                                       ||
                               fc($a)  cmp  fc($b)
               } @old;

               # same thing, but much more efficiently;
               # we'll build auxiliary indices instead
               # for speed
               my (@nums, @caps);
               for (@old) {
                   push @nums, ( /=(\d+)/ ? $1 : undef );
                   push @caps, fc($_);
               }

               my @new = @old[ sort {
                                      $nums[$b] <=> $nums[$a]
                                               ||
                                      $caps[$a] cmp $caps[$b]
                                    } 0..$#old
                             ];

               # same thing, but without any temps
               my @new = map { $_->[0] }
                      sort { $b->[1] <=> $a->[1]
                                      ||
                             $a->[2] cmp $b->[2]
                      } map { [$_, /=(\d+)/, fc($_)] } @old;

               # using a prototype allows you to use any comparison subroutine
               # as a sort subroutine (including other package's subroutines)
               package Other;
               sub backwards ($$) { $_[1] cmp $_[0]; }  # $a and $b are
                                                        # not set here
               package main;
               my @new = sort Other::backwards @old;

               # guarantee stability
               use sort 'stable';
               my @new = sort { substr($a, 3, 5) cmp substr($b, 3, 5) } @old;

           Warning: syntactical care is required when sorting the list
           returned from a function.  If you want to sort the list returned by
           the function call "find_records(@key)", you can use:

               my @contact = sort { $a cmp $b } find_records @key;
               my @contact = sort +find_records(@key);
               my @contact = sort &find_records(@key);
               my @contact = sort(find_records(@key));

           If instead you want to sort the array @key with the comparison
           routine "find_records()" then you can use:

               my @contact = sort { find_records() } @key;
               my @contact = sort find_records(@key);
               my @contact = sort(find_records @key);
               my @contact = sort(find_records (@key));

           $a and $b are set as package globals in the package the sort() is
           called from.  That means $main::a and $main::b (or $::a and $::b)
           in the "main" package, $FooPack::a and $FooPack::b in the "FooPack"
           package, etc.  If the sort block is in scope of a "my" or "state"
           declaration of $a and/or $b, you must spell out the full name of
           the variables in the sort block :

              package main;
              my $a = "C"; # DANGER, Will Robinson, DANGER !!!

              print sort { $a cmp $b }               qw(A C E G B D F H);
                                                     # WRONG
              sub badlexi { $a cmp $b }
              print sort badlexi                     qw(A C E G B D F H);
                                                     # WRONG
              # the above prints BACFEDGH or some other incorrect ordering

              print sort { $::a cmp $::b }           qw(A C E G B D F H);
                                                     # OK
              print sort { our $a cmp our $b }       qw(A C E G B D F H);
                                                     # also OK
              print sort { our ($a, $b); $a cmp $b } qw(A C E G B D F H);
                                                     # also OK
              sub lexi { our $a cmp our $b }
              print sort lexi                        qw(A C E G B D F H);
                                                     # also OK
              # the above print ABCDEFGH

           With proper care you may mix package and my (or state) $a and/or
           $b:

              my $a = {
                 tiny   => -2,
                 small  => -1,
                 normal => 0,
                 big    => 1,
                 huge   => 2
              };

              say sort { $a->{our $a} <=> $a->{our $b} }
                  qw{ huge normal tiny small big};

              # prints tinysmallnormalbighuge

           $a and $b are implicitly local to the sort() execution and regain
           their former values upon completing the sort.

           Sort subroutines written using $a and $b are bound to their calling
           package. It is possible, but of limited interest, to define them in
           a different package, since the subroutine must still refer to the
           calling package's $a and $b :

              package Foo;
              sub lexi { $Bar::a cmp $Bar::b }
              package Bar;
              ... sort Foo::lexi ...

           Use the prototyped versions (see above) for a more generic
           alternative.

           The comparison function is required to behave.  If it returns
           inconsistent results (sometimes saying $x[1] is less than $x[2] and
           sometimes saying the opposite, for example) the results are not
           well-defined.

           Because "<=>" returns "undef" when either operand is "NaN" (not-a-
           number), be careful when sorting with a comparison function like
           "$a <=> $b" any lists that might contain a "NaN".  The following
           example takes advantage that "NaN != NaN" to eliminate any "NaN"s
           from the input list.

               my @result = sort { $a <=> $b } grep { $_ == $_ } @input;

       splice ARRAY,OFFSET,LENGTH,LIST
       splice ARRAY,OFFSET,LENGTH
       splice ARRAY,OFFSET
       splice ARRAY
           Removes the elements designated by OFFSET and LENGTH from an array,
           and replaces them with the elements of LIST, if any.  In list
           context, returns the elements removed from the array.  In scalar
           context, returns the last element removed, or "undef" if no
           elements are removed.  The array grows or shrinks as necessary.  If
           OFFSET is negative then it starts that far from the end of the
           array.  If LENGTH is omitted, removes everything from OFFSET
           onward.  If LENGTH is negative, removes the elements from OFFSET
           onward except for -LENGTH elements at the end of the array.  If
           both OFFSET and LENGTH are omitted, removes everything.  If OFFSET
           is past the end of the array and a LENGTH was provided, Perl issues
           a warning, and splices at the end of the array.

           The following equivalences hold (assuming "$#a >= $i" )

               push(@a,$x,$y)      splice(@a,@a,0,$x,$y)
               pop(@a)             splice(@a,-1)
               shift(@a)           splice(@a,0,1)
               unshift(@a,$x,$y)   splice(@a,0,0,$x,$y)
               $a[$i] = $y         splice(@a,$i,1,$y)

           "splice" can be used, for example, to implement n-ary queue
           processing:

               sub nary_print {
                 my $n = shift;
                 while (my @next_n = splice @_, 0, $n) {
                   say join q{ -- }, @next_n;
                 }
               }

               nary_print(3, qw(a b c d e f g h));
               # prints:
               #   a -- b -- c
               #   d -- e -- f
               #   g -- h

           Starting with Perl 5.14, an experimental feature allowed "splice"
           to take a scalar expression. This experiment has been deemed
           unsuccessful, and was removed as of Perl 5.24.

       split /PATTERN/,EXPR,LIMIT
       split /PATTERN/,EXPR
       split /PATTERN/
       split
           Splits the string EXPR into a list of strings and returns the list
           in list context, or the size of the list in scalar context.  (Prior
           to Perl 5.11, it also overwrote @_ with the list in void and scalar
           context. If you target old perls, beware.)

           If only PATTERN is given, EXPR defaults to $_.

           Anything in EXPR that matches PATTERN is taken to be a separator
           that separates the EXPR into substrings (called "fields") that do
           not include the separator.  Note that a separator may be longer
           than one character or even have no characters at all (the empty
           string, which is a zero-width match).

           The PATTERN need not be constant; an expression may be used to
           specify a pattern that varies at runtime.

           If PATTERN matches the empty string, the EXPR is split at the match
           position (between characters).  As an example, the following:

               print join(':', split(/b/, 'abc')), "\n";

           uses the "b" in 'abc' as a separator to produce the output "a:c".
           However, this:

               print join(':', split(//, 'abc')), "\n";

           uses empty string matches as separators to produce the output
           "a:b:c"; thus, the empty string may be used to split EXPR into a
           list of its component characters.

           As a special case for "split", the empty pattern given in match
           operator syntax ("//") specifically matches the empty string, which
           is contrary to its usual interpretation as the last successful
           match.

           If PATTERN is "/^/", then it is treated as if it used the multiline
           modifier ("/^/m"), since it isn't much use otherwise.

           "/m" and any of the other pattern modifiers valid for "qr"
           (summarized in "qr/STRING/msixpodualn" in perlop) may be specified
           explicitly.

           As another special case, "split" emulates the default behavior of
           the command line tool awk when the PATTERN is either omitted or a
           string composed of a single space character (such as '' or "\x20",
           but not e.g. "//").  In this case, any leading whitespace in EXPR
           is removed before splitting occurs, and the PATTERN is instead
           treated as if it were "/\s+/"; in particular, this means that any
           contiguous whitespace (not just a single space character) is used
           as a separator.  However, this special treatment can be avoided by
           specifying the pattern "//" instead of the string "", thereby
           allowing only a single space character to be a separator.  In
           earlier Perls this special case was restricted to the use of a
           plain "" as the pattern argument to split; in Perl 5.18.0 and later
           this special case is triggered by any expression which evaluates to
           the simple string "".

           As of Perl 5.28, this special-cased whitespace splitting works as
           expected in the scope of "usefeature'unicode_strings". In previous
           versions, and outside the scope of that feature, it exhibits "The
           "Unicode Bug"" in perlunicode: characters that are whitespace
           according to Unicode rules but not according to ASCII rules can be
           treated as part of fields rather than as field separators,
           depending on the string's internal encoding.

           If omitted, PATTERN defaults to a single space, "", triggering the
           previously described awk emulation.

           If LIMIT is specified and positive, it represents the maximum
           number of fields into which the EXPR may be split; in other words,
           LIMIT is one greater than the maximum number of times EXPR may be
           split.  Thus, the LIMIT value 1 means that EXPR may be split a
           maximum of zero times, producing a maximum of one field (namely,
           the entire value of EXPR).  For instance:

               print join(':', split(//, 'abc', 1)), "\n";

           produces the output "abc", and this:

               print join(':', split(//, 'abc', 2)), "\n";

           produces the output "a:bc", and each of these:

               print join(':', split(//, 'abc', 3)), "\n";
               print join(':', split(//, 'abc', 4)), "\n";

           produces the output "a:b:c".

           If LIMIT is negative, it is treated as if it were instead
           arbitrarily large; as many fields as possible are produced.

           If LIMIT is omitted (or, equivalently, zero), then it is usually
           treated as if it were instead negative but with the exception that
           trailing empty fields are stripped (empty leading fields are always
           preserved); if all fields are empty, then all fields are considered
           to be trailing (and are thus stripped in this case).  Thus, the
           following:

               print join(':', split(/,/, 'a,b,c,,,')), "\n";

           produces the output "a:b:c", but the following:

               print join(':', split(/,/, 'a,b,c,,,', -1)), "\n";

           produces the output "a:b:c:::".

           In time-critical applications, it is worthwhile to avoid splitting
           into more fields than necessary.  Thus, when assigning to a list,
           if LIMIT is omitted (or zero), then LIMIT is treated as though it
           were one larger than the number of variables in the list; for the
           following, LIMIT is implicitly 3:

               my ($login, $passwd) = split(/:/);

           Note that splitting an EXPR that evaluates to the empty string
           always produces zero fields, regardless of the LIMIT specified.

           An empty leading field is produced when there is a positive-width
           match at the beginning of EXPR.  For instance:

               print join(':', split(/ /, ' abc')), "\n";

           produces the output ":abc".  However, a zero-width match at the
           beginning of EXPR never produces an empty field, so that:

               print join(':', split(//, ' abc'));

           produces the output ":a:b:c" (rather than "::a:b:c").

           An empty trailing field, on the other hand, is produced when there
           is a match at the end of EXPR, regardless of the length of the
           match (of course, unless a non-zero LIMIT is given explicitly, such
           fields are removed, as in the last example).  Thus:

               print join(':', split(//, ' abc', -1)), "\n";

           produces the output ":a:b:c:".

           If the PATTERN contains capturing groups, then for each separator,
           an additional field is produced for each substring captured by a
           group (in the order in which the groups are specified, as per
           backreferences); if any group does not match, then it captures the
           "undef" value instead of a substring.  Also, note that any such
           additional field is produced whenever there is a separator (that
           is, whenever a split occurs), and such an additional field does not
           count towards the LIMIT.  Consider the following expressions
           evaluated in list context (each returned list is provided in the
           associated comment):

               split(/-|,/, "1-10,20", 3)
               # ('1', '10', '20')

               split(/(-|,)/, "1-10,20", 3)
               # ('1', '-', '10', ',', '20')

               split(/-|(,)/, "1-10,20", 3)
               # ('1', undef, '10', ',', '20')

               split(/(-)|,/, "1-10,20", 3)
               # ('1', '-', '10', undef, '20')

               split(/(-)|(,)/, "1-10,20", 3)
               # ('1', '-', undef, '10', undef, ',', '20')

       sprintf FORMAT, LIST
           Returns a string formatted by the usual "printf" conventions of the
           C library function "sprintf".  See below for more details and see
           sprintf(3) or printf(3) on your system for an explanation of the
           general principles.

           For example:

                   # Format number with up to 8 leading zeroes
                   my $result = sprintf("%08d", $number);

                   # Round number to 3 digits after decimal point
                   my $rounded = sprintf("%.3f", $number);

           Perl does its own "sprintf" formatting: it emulates the C function
           sprintf(3), but doesn't use it except for floating-point numbers,
           and even then only standard modifiers are allowed.  Non-standard
           extensions in your local sprintf(3) are therefore unavailable from
           Perl.

           Unlike "printf", "sprintf" does not do what you probably mean when
           you pass it an array as your first argument.  The array is given
           scalar context, and instead of using the 0th element of the array
           as the format, Perl will use the count of elements in the array as
           the format, which is almost never useful.

           Perl's "sprintf" permits the following universally-known
           conversions:

              %%    a percent sign
              %c    a character with the given number
              %s    a string
              %d    a signed integer, in decimal
              %u    an unsigned integer, in decimal
              %o    an unsigned integer, in octal
              %x    an unsigned integer, in hexadecimal
              %e    a floating-point number, in scientific notation
              %f    a floating-point number, in fixed decimal notation
              %g    a floating-point number, in %e or %f notation

           In addition, Perl permits the following widely-supported
           conversions:

              %X    like %x, but using upper-case letters
              %E    like %e, but using an upper-case "E"
              %G    like %g, but with an upper-case "E" (if applicable)
              %b    an unsigned integer, in binary
              %B    like %b, but using an upper-case "B" with the # flag
              %p    a pointer (outputs the Perl value's address in hexadecimal)
              %n    special: *stores* the number of characters output so far
                    into the next argument in the parameter list
              %a    hexadecimal floating point
              %A    like %a, but using upper-case letters

           Finally, for backward (and we do mean "backward") compatibility,
           Perl permits these unnecessary but widely-supported conversions:

              %i    a synonym for %d
              %D    a synonym for %ld
              %U    a synonym for %lu
              %O    a synonym for %lo
              %F    a synonym for %f

           Note that the number of exponent digits in the scientific notation
           produced by %e, %E, %g and %G for numbers with the modulus of the
           exponent less than 100 is system-dependent: it may be three or less
           (zero-padded as necessary).  In other words, 1.23 times ten to the
           99th may be either "1.23e99" or "1.23e099".  Similarly for %a and
           %A: the exponent or the hexadecimal digits may float: especially
           the "long doubles" Perl configuration option may cause surprises.

           Between the "%" and the format letter, you may specify several
           additional attributes controlling the interpretation of the format.
           In order, these are:

           format parameter index
               An explicit format parameter index, such as "2$".  By default
               sprintf will format the next unused argument in the list, but
               this allows you to take the arguments out of order:

                 printf '%2$d %1$d', 12, 34;      # prints "34 12"
                 printf '%3$d %d %1$d', 1, 2, 3;  # prints "3 1 1"

           flags
               one or more of:

                  space   prefix non-negative number with a space
                  +       prefix non-negative number with a plus sign
                  -       left-justify within the field
                  0       use zeros, not spaces, to right-justify
                  #       ensure the leading "0" for any octal,
                          prefix non-zero hexadecimal with "0x" or "0X",
                          prefix non-zero binary with "0b" or "0B"

               For example:

                 printf '<% d>',  12;   # prints "< 12>"
                 printf '<% d>',   0;   # prints "< 0>"
                 printf '<% d>', -12;   # prints "<-12>"
                 printf '<%+d>',  12;   # prints "<+12>"
                 printf '<%+d>',   0;   # prints "<+0>"
                 printf '<%+d>', -12;   # prints "<-12>"
                 printf '<%6s>',  12;   # prints "<    12>"
                 printf '<%-6s>', 12;   # prints "<12    >"
                 printf '<%06s>', 12;   # prints "<000012>"
                 printf '<%#o>',  12;   # prints "<014>"
                 printf '<%#x>',  12;   # prints "<0xc>"
                 printf '<%#X>',  12;   # prints "<0XC>"
                 printf '<%#b>',  12;   # prints "<0b1100>"
                 printf '<%#B>',  12;   # prints "<0B1100>"

               When a space and a plus sign are given as the flags at once,
               the space is ignored.

                 printf '<%+ d>', 12;   # prints "<+12>"
                 printf '<% +d>', 12;   # prints "<+12>"

               When the # flag and a precision are given in the %o conversion,
               the precision is incremented if it's necessary for the leading
               "0".

                 printf '<%#.5o>', 012;      # prints "<00012>"
                 printf '<%#.5o>', 012345;   # prints "<012345>"
                 printf '<%#.0o>', 0;        # prints "<0>"

           vector flag
               This flag tells Perl to interpret the supplied string as a
               vector of integers, one for each character in the string.  Perl
               applies the format to each integer in turn, then joins the
               resulting strings with a separator (a dot "." by default).
               This can be useful for displaying ordinal values of characters
               in arbitrary strings:

                 printf "%vd", "AB\x{100}";           # prints "65.66.256"
                 printf "version is v%vd\n", $^V;     # Perl's version

               Put an asterisk "*" before the "v" to override the string to
               use to separate the numbers:

                 printf "address is %*vX\n", ":", $addr;   # IPv6 address
                 printf "bits are %0*v8b\n", " ", $bits;   # random bitstring

               You can also explicitly specify the argument number to use for
               the join string using something like "*2$v"; for example:

                 printf '%*4$vX %*4$vX %*4$vX',       # 3 IPv6 addresses
                         @addr[1..3], ":";

           (minimum) width
               Arguments are usually formatted to be only as wide as required
               to display the given value.  You can override the width by
               putting a number here, or get the width from the next argument
               (with "*") or from a specified argument (e.g., with "*2$"):

                printf "<%s>", "a";       # prints "<a>"
                printf "<%6s>", "a";      # prints "<     a>"
                printf "<%*s>", 6, "a";   # prints "<     a>"
                printf '<%*2$s>', "a", 6; # prints "<     a>"
                printf "<%2s>", "long";   # prints "<long>" (does not truncate)

               If a field width obtained through "*" is negative, it has the
               same effect as the "-" flag: left-justification.

           precision, or maximum width
               You can specify a precision (for numeric conversions) or a
               maximum width (for string conversions) by specifying a "."
               followed by a number.  For floating-point formats except "g"
               and "G", this specifies how many places right of the decimal
               point to show (the default being 6).  For example:

                 # these examples are subject to system-specific variation
                 printf '<%f>', 1;    # prints "<1.000000>"
                 printf '<%.1f>', 1;  # prints "<1.0>"
                 printf '<%.0f>', 1;  # prints "<1>"
                 printf '<%e>', 10;   # prints "<1.000000e+01>"
                 printf '<%.1e>', 10; # prints "<1.0e+01>"

               For "g" and "G", this specifies the maximum number of
               significant digits to show; for example:

                 # These examples are subject to system-specific variation.
                 printf '<%g>', 1;        # prints "<1>"
                 printf '<%.10g>', 1;     # prints "<1>"
                 printf '<%g>', 100;      # prints "<100>"
                 printf '<%.1g>', 100;    # prints "<1e+02>"
                 printf '<%.2g>', 100.01; # prints "<1e+02>"
                 printf '<%.5g>', 100.01; # prints "<100.01>"
                 printf '<%.4g>', 100.01; # prints "<100>"
                 printf '<%.1g>', 0.0111; # prints "<0.01>"
                 printf '<%.2g>', 0.0111; # prints "<0.011>"
                 printf '<%.3g>', 0.0111; # prints "<0.0111>"

               For integer conversions, specifying a precision implies that
               the output of the number itself should be zero-padded to this
               width, where the 0 flag is ignored:

                 printf '<%.6d>', 1;      # prints "<000001>"
                 printf '<%+.6d>', 1;     # prints "<+000001>"
                 printf '<%-10.6d>', 1;   # prints "<000001    >"
                 printf '<%10.6d>', 1;    # prints "<    000001>"
                 printf '<%010.6d>', 1;   # prints "<    000001>"
                 printf '<%+10.6d>', 1;   # prints "<   +000001>"

                 printf '<%.6x>', 1;      # prints "<000001>"
                 printf '<%#.6x>', 1;     # prints "<0x000001>"
                 printf '<%-10.6x>', 1;   # prints "<000001    >"
                 printf '<%10.6x>', 1;    # prints "<    000001>"
                 printf '<%010.6x>', 1;   # prints "<    000001>"
                 printf '<%#10.6x>', 1;   # prints "<  0x000001>"

               For string conversions, specifying a precision truncates the
               string to fit the specified width:

                 printf '<%.5s>', "truncated";   # prints "<trunc>"
                 printf '<%10.5s>', "truncated"; # prints "<     trunc>"

               You can also get the precision from the next argument using
               ".*", or from a specified argument (e.g., with ".*2$"):

                 printf '<%.6x>', 1;       # prints "<000001>"
                 printf '<%.*x>', 6, 1;    # prints "<000001>"

                 printf '<%.*2$x>', 1, 6;  # prints "<000001>"

                 printf '<%6.*2$x>', 1, 4; # prints "<  0001>"

               If a precision obtained through "*" is negative, it counts as
               having no precision at all.

                 printf '<%.*s>',  7, "string";   # prints "<string>"
                 printf '<%.*s>',  3, "string";   # prints "<str>"
                 printf '<%.*s>',  0, "string";   # prints "<>"
                 printf '<%.*s>', -1, "string";   # prints "<string>"

                 printf '<%.*d>',  1, 0;   # prints "<0>"
                 printf '<%.*d>',  0, 0;   # prints "<>"
                 printf '<%.*d>', -1, 0;   # prints "<0>"

           size
               For numeric conversions, you can specify the size to interpret
               the number as using "l", "h", "V", "q", "L", or "ll".  For
               integer conversions ("d u o x X b i D U O"), numbers are
               usually assumed to be whatever the default integer size is on
               your platform (usually 32 or 64 bits), but you can override
               this to use instead one of the standard C types, as supported
               by the compiler used to build Perl:

                  hh          interpret integer as C type "char" or "unsigned
                              char" on Perl 5.14 or later
                  h           interpret integer as C type "short" or
                              "unsigned short"
                  j           interpret integer as C type "intmax_t" on Perl
                              5.14 or later; and prior to Perl 5.30, only with
                              a C99 compiler (unportable)
                  l           interpret integer as C type "long" or
                              "unsigned long"
                  q, L, or ll interpret integer as C type "long long",
                              "unsigned long long", or "quad" (typically
                              64-bit integers)
                  t           interpret integer as C type "ptrdiff_t" on Perl
                              5.14 or later
                  z           interpret integer as C type "size_t" on Perl 5.14
                              or later

               As of 5.14, none of these raises an exception if they are not
               supported on your platform.  However, if warnings are enabled,
               a warning of the "printf" warning class is issued on an
               unsupported conversion flag.  Should you instead prefer an
               exception, do this:

                   use warnings FATAL => "printf";

               If you would like to know about a version dependency before you
               start running the program, put something like this at its top:

                   use 5.014;  # for hh/j/t/z/ printf modifiers

               You can find out whether your Perl supports quads via Config:

                   use Config;
                   if ($Config{use64bitint} eq "define"
                       || $Config{longsize} >= 8) {
                       print "Nice quads!\n";
                   }

               For floating-point conversions ("e f g E F G"), numbers are
               usually assumed to be the default floating-point size on your
               platform (double or long double), but you can force "long
               double" with "q", "L", or "ll" if your platform supports them.
               You can find out whether your Perl supports long doubles via
               Config:

                   use Config;
                   print "long doubles\n" if $Config{d_longdbl} eq "define";

               You can find out whether Perl considers "long double" to be the
               default floating-point size to use on your platform via Config:

                   use Config;
                   if ($Config{uselongdouble} eq "define") {
                       print "long doubles by default\n";
                   }

               It can also be that long doubles and doubles are the same
               thing:

                       use Config;
                       ($Config{doublesize} == $Config{longdblsize}) &&
                               print "doubles are long doubles\n";

               The size specifier "V" has no effect for Perl code, but is
               supported for compatibility with XS code.  It means "use the
               standard size for a Perl integer or floating-point number",
               which is the default.

           order of arguments
               Normally, "sprintf" takes the next unused argument as the value
               to format for each format specification.  If the format
               specification uses "*" to require additional arguments, these
               are consumed from the argument list in the order they appear in
               the format specification before the value to format.  Where an
               argument is specified by an explicit index, this does not
               affect the normal order for the arguments, even when the
               explicitly specified index would have been the next argument.

               So:

                   printf "<%*.*s>", $a, $b, $c;

               uses $a for the width, $b for the precision, and $c as the
               value to format; while:

                 printf '<%*1$.*s>', $a, $b;

               would use $a for the width and precision, and $b as the value
               to format.

               Here are some more examples; be aware that when using an
               explicit index, the "$" may need escaping:

                printf "%2\$d %d\n",      12, 34;     # will print "34 12\n"
                printf "%2\$d %d %d\n",   12, 34;     # will print "34 12 34\n"
                printf "%3\$d %d %d\n",   12, 34, 56; # will print "56 12 34\n"
                printf "%2\$*3\$d %d\n",  12, 34,  3; # will print " 34 12\n"
                printf "%*1\$.*f\n",       4,  5, 10; # will print "5.0000\n"

           If "use locale" (including "use locale ':not_characters'") is in
           effect and "POSIX::setlocale" has been called, the character used
           for the decimal separator in formatted floating-point numbers is
           affected by the "LC_NUMERIC" locale.  See perllocale and POSIX.

       sqrt EXPR
       sqrt
           Return the positive square root of EXPR.  If EXPR is omitted, uses
           $_.  Works only for non-negative operands unless you've loaded the
           "Math::Complex" module.

               use Math::Complex;
               print sqrt(-4);    # prints 2i

       srand EXPR
       srand
           Sets and returns the random number seed for the "rand" operator.

           The point of the function is to "seed" the "rand" function so that
           "rand" can produce a different sequence each time you run your
           program.  When called with a parameter, "srand" uses that for the
           seed; otherwise it (semi-)randomly chooses a seed.  In either case,
           starting with Perl 5.14, it returns the seed.  To signal that your
           code will work only on Perls of a recent vintage:

               use 5.014;  # so srand returns the seed

           If "srand" is not called explicitly, it is called implicitly
           without a parameter at the first use of the "rand" operator.
           However, there are a few situations where programs are likely to
           want to call "srand".  One is for generating predictable results,
           generally for testing or debugging.  There, you use "srand($seed)",
           with the same $seed each time.  Another case is that you may want
           to call "srand" after a "fork" to avoid child processes sharing the
           same seed value as the parent (and consequently each other).

           Do not call "srand()" (i.e., without an argument) more than once
           per process.  The internal state of the random number generator
           should contain more entropy than can be provided by any seed, so
           calling "srand" again actually loses randomness.

           Most implementations of "srand" take an integer and will silently
           truncate decimal numbers.  This means "srand(42)" will usually
           produce the same results as "srand(42.1)".  To be safe, always pass
           "srand" an integer.

           A typical use of the returned seed is for a test program which has
           too many combinations to test comprehensively in the time available
           to it each run.  It can test a random subset each time, and should
           there be a failure, log the seed used for that run so that it can
           later be used to reproduce the same results.

           "rand" is not cryptographically secure.  You should not rely on it
           in security-sensitive situations.  As of this writing, a number of
           third-party CPAN modules offer random number generators intended by
           their authors to be cryptographically secure, including:
           Data::Entropy, Crypt::Random, Math::Random::Secure, and
           Math::TrulyRandom.

       stat FILEHANDLE
       stat EXPR
       stat DIRHANDLE
       stat
           Returns a 13-element list giving the status info for a file, either
           the file opened via FILEHANDLE or DIRHANDLE, or named by EXPR.  If
           EXPR is omitted, it stats $_ (not "_"!).  Returns the empty list if
           "stat" fails.  Typically used as follows:

               my ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size,
                   $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks)
                      = stat($filename);

           Not all fields are supported on all filesystem types.  Here are the
           meanings of the fields:

             0 dev      device number of filesystem
             1 ino      inode number
             2 mode     file mode  (type and permissions)
             3 nlink    number of (hard) links to the file
             4 uid      numeric user ID of file's owner
             5 gid      numeric group ID of file's owner
             6 rdev     the device identifier (special files only)
             7 size     total size of file, in bytes
             8 atime    last access time in seconds since the epoch
             9 mtime    last modify time in seconds since the epoch
            10 ctime    inode change time in seconds since the epoch (*)
            11 blksize  preferred I/O size in bytes for interacting with the
                        file (may vary from file to file)
            12 blocks   actual number of system-specific blocks allocated
                        on disk (often, but not always, 512 bytes each)

           (The epoch was at 00:00 January 1, 1970 GMT.)

           (*) Not all fields are supported on all filesystem types.  Notably,
           the ctime field is non-portable.  In particular, you cannot expect
           it to be a "creation time"; see "Files and Filesystems" in perlport
           for details.

           If "stat" is passed the special filehandle consisting of an
           underline, no stat is done, but the current contents of the stat
           structure from the last "stat", "lstat", or filetest are returned.
           Example:

               if (-x $file && (($d) = stat(_)) && $d < 0) {
                   print "$file is executable NFS file\n";
               }

           (This works on machines only for which the device number is
           negative under NFS.)

           On some platforms inode numbers are of a type larger than perl
           knows how to handle as integer numerical values.  If necessary, an
           inode number will be returned as a decimal string in order to
           preserve the entire value.  If used in a numeric context, this will
           be converted to a floating-point numerical value, with rounding, a
           fate that is best avoided.  Therefore, you should prefer to compare
           inode numbers using "eq" rather than "==".  "eq" will work fine on
           inode numbers that are represented numerically, as well as those
           represented as strings.

           Because the mode contains both the file type and its permissions,
           you should mask off the file type portion and (s)printf using a
           "%o" if you want to see the real permissions.

               my $mode = (stat($filename))[2];
               printf "Permissions are %04o\n", $mode & 07777;

           In scalar context, "stat" returns a boolean value indicating
           success or failure, and, if successful, sets the information
           associated with the special filehandle "_".

           The File::stat module provides a convenient, by-name access
           mechanism:

               use File::stat;
               my $sb = stat($filename);
               printf "File is %s, size is %s, perm %04o, mtime %s\n",
                      $filename, $sb->size, $sb->mode & 07777,
                      scalar localtime $sb->mtime;

           You can import symbolic mode constants ("S_IF*") and functions
           ("S_IS*") from the Fcntl module:

               use Fcntl ':mode';

               my $mode = (stat($filename))[2];

               my $user_rwx      = ($mode & S_IRWXU) >> 6;
               my $group_read    = ($mode & S_IRGRP) >> 3;
               my $other_execute =  $mode & S_IXOTH;

               printf "Permissions are %04o\n", S_IMODE($mode), "\n";

               my $is_setuid     =  $mode & S_ISUID;
               my $is_directory  =  S_ISDIR($mode);

           You could write the last two using the "-u" and "-d" operators.
           Commonly available "S_IF*" constants are:

               # Permissions: read, write, execute, for user, group, others.

               S_IRWXU S_IRUSR S_IWUSR S_IXUSR
               S_IRWXG S_IRGRP S_IWGRP S_IXGRP
               S_IRWXO S_IROTH S_IWOTH S_IXOTH

               # Setuid/Setgid/Stickiness/SaveText.
               # Note that the exact meaning of these is system-dependent.

               S_ISUID S_ISGID S_ISVTX S_ISTXT

               # File types.  Not all are necessarily available on
               # your system.

               S_IFREG S_IFDIR S_IFLNK S_IFBLK S_IFCHR
               S_IFIFO S_IFSOCK S_IFWHT S_ENFMT

               # The following are compatibility aliases for S_IRUSR,
               # S_IWUSR, and S_IXUSR.

               S_IREAD S_IWRITE S_IEXEC

           and the "S_IF*" functions are

               S_IMODE($mode)    the part of $mode containing the permission
                                 bits and the setuid/setgid/sticky bits

               S_IFMT($mode)     the part of $mode containing the file type
                                 which can be bit-anded with (for example)
                                 S_IFREG or with the following functions

               # The operators -f, -d, -l, -b, -c, -p, and -S.

               S_ISREG($mode) S_ISDIR($mode) S_ISLNK($mode)
               S_ISBLK($mode) S_ISCHR($mode) S_ISFIFO($mode) S_ISSOCK($mode)

               # No direct -X operator counterpart, but for the first one
               # the -g operator is often equivalent.  The ENFMT stands for
               # record flocking enforcement, a platform-dependent feature.

               S_ISENFMT($mode) S_ISWHT($mode)

           See your native chmod(2) and stat(2) documentation for more details
           about the "S_*" constants.  To get status info for a symbolic link
           instead of the target file behind the link, use the "lstat"
           function.

           Portability issues: "stat" in perlport.

       state VARLIST
       state TYPE VARLIST
       state VARLIST : ATTRS
       state TYPE VARLIST : ATTRS
           "state" declares a lexically scoped variable, just like "my".
           However, those variables will never be reinitialized, contrary to
           lexical variables that are reinitialized each time their enclosing
           block is entered.  See "Persistent Private Variables" in perlsub
           for details.

           If more than one variable is listed, the list must be placed in
           parentheses.  With a parenthesised list, "undef" can be used as a
           dummy placeholder.  However, since initialization of state
           variables in such lists is currently not possible this would serve
           no purpose.

           "state" is available only if the "state" feature is enabled or if
           it is prefixed with "CORE::".  The "state" feature is enabled
           automatically with a "use v5.10" (or higher) declaration in the
           current scope.

       study SCALAR
       study
           At this time, "study" does nothing. This may change in the future.

           Prior to Perl version 5.16, it would create an inverted index of
           all characters that occurred in the given SCALAR (or $_ if
           unspecified). When matching a pattern, the rarest character from
           the pattern would be looked up in this index. Rarity was based on
           some static frequency tables constructed from some C programs and
           English text.

       sub NAME BLOCK
       sub NAME (PROTO) BLOCK
       sub NAME : ATTRS BLOCK
       sub NAME (PROTO) : ATTRS BLOCK
           This is subroutine definition, not a real function per se.  Without
           a BLOCK it's just a forward declaration.  Without a NAME, it's an
           anonymous function declaration, so does return a value: the CODE
           ref of the closure just created.

           See perlsub and perlref for details about subroutines and
           references; see attributes and Attribute::Handlers for more
           information about attributes.

       __SUB__
           A special token that returns a reference to the current subroutine,
           or "undef" outside of a subroutine.

           The behaviour of "__SUB__" within a regex code block (such as
           "/(?{...})/") is subject to change.

           This token is only available under "use v5.16" or the "current_sub"
           feature.  See feature.

       substr EXPR,OFFSET,LENGTH,REPLACEMENT
       substr EXPR,OFFSET,LENGTH
       substr EXPR,OFFSET
           Extracts a substring out of EXPR and returns it.  First character
           is at offset zero.  If OFFSET is negative, starts that far back
           from the end of the string.  If LENGTH is omitted, returns
           everything through the end of the string.  If LENGTH is negative,
           leaves that many characters off the end of the string.

               my $s = "The black cat climbed the green tree";
               my $color  = substr $s, 4, 5;      # black
               my $middle = substr $s, 4, -11;    # black cat climbed the
               my $end    = substr $s, 14;        # climbed the green tree
               my $tail   = substr $s, -4;        # tree
               my $z      = substr $s, -4, 2;     # tr

           You can use the "substr" function as an lvalue, in which case EXPR
           must itself be an lvalue.  If you assign something shorter than
           LENGTH, the string will shrink, and if you assign something longer
           than LENGTH, the string will grow to accommodate it.  To keep the
           string the same length, you may need to pad or chop your value
           using "sprintf".

           If OFFSET and LENGTH specify a substring that is partly outside the
           string, only the part within the string is returned.  If the
           substring is beyond either end of the string, "substr" returns the
           undefined value and produces a warning.  When used as an lvalue,
           specifying a substring that is entirely outside the string raises
           an exception.  Here's an example showing the behavior for boundary
           cases:

               my $name = 'fred';
               substr($name, 4) = 'dy';         # $name is now 'freddy'
               my $null = substr $name, 6, 2;   # returns "" (no warning)
               my $oops = substr $name, 7;      # returns undef, with warning
               substr($name, 7) = 'gap';        # raises an exception

           An alternative to using "substr" as an lvalue is to specify the
           replacement string as the 4th argument.  This allows you to replace
           parts of the EXPR and return what was there before in one
           operation, just as you can with "splice".

               my $s = "The black cat climbed the green tree";
               my $z = substr $s, 14, 7, "jumped from";    # climbed
               # $s is now "The black cat jumped from the green tree"

           Note that the lvalue returned by the three-argument version of
           "substr" acts as a 'magic bullet'; each time it is assigned to, it
           remembers which part of the original string is being modified; for
           example:

               my $x = '1234';
               for (substr($x,1,2)) {
                   $_ = 'a';   print $x,"\n";    # prints 1a4
                   $_ = 'xyz'; print $x,"\n";    # prints 1xyz4
                   $x = '56789';
                   $_ = 'pq';  print $x,"\n";    # prints 5pq9
               }

           With negative offsets, it remembers its position from the end of
           the string when the target string is modified:

               my $x = '1234';
               for (substr($x, -3, 2)) {
                   $_ = 'a';   print $x,"\n";    # prints 1a4, as above
                   $x = 'abcdefg';
                   print $_,"\n";                # prints f
               }

           Prior to Perl version 5.10, the result of using an lvalue multiple
           times was unspecified.  Prior to 5.16, the result with negative
           offsets was unspecified.

       symlink OLDFILE,NEWFILE
           Creates a new filename symbolically linked to the old filename.
           Returns 1 for success, 0 otherwise.  On systems that don't support
           symbolic links, raises an exception.  To check for that, use eval:

               my $symlink_exists = eval { symlink("",""); 1 };

           Portability issues: "symlink" in perlport.

       syscall NUMBER, LIST
           Calls the system call specified as the first element of the list,
           passing the remaining elements as arguments to the system call.  If
           unimplemented, raises an exception.  The arguments are interpreted
           as follows: if a given argument is numeric, the argument is passed
           as an int.  If not, the pointer to the string value is passed.  You
           are responsible to make sure a string is pre-extended long enough
           to receive any result that might be written into a string.  You
           can't use a string literal (or other read-only string) as an
           argument to "syscall" because Perl has to assume that any string
           pointer might be written through.  If your integer arguments are
           not literals and have never been interpreted in a numeric context,
           you may need to add 0 to them to force them to look like numbers.
           This emulates the "syswrite" function (or vice versa):

               require 'syscall.ph';        # may need to run h2ph
               my $s = "hi there\n";
               syscall(SYS_write(), fileno(STDOUT), $s, length $s);

           Note that Perl supports passing of up to only 14 arguments to your
           syscall, which in practice should (usually) suffice.

           Syscall returns whatever value returned by the system call it
           calls.  If the system call fails, "syscall" returns "-1" and sets
           $! (errno).  Note that some system calls can legitimately return
           "-1".  The proper way to handle such calls is to assign "$! = 0"
           before the call, then check the value of $! if "syscall" returns
           "-1".

           There's a problem with "syscall(SYS_pipe())": it returns the file
           number of the read end of the pipe it creates, but there is no way
           to retrieve the file number of the other end.  You can avoid this
           problem by using "pipe" instead.

           Portability issues: "syscall" in perlport.

       sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE
       sysopen FILEHANDLE,FILENAME,MODE,PERMS
           Opens the file whose filename is given by FILENAME, and associates
           it with FILEHANDLE.  If FILEHANDLE is an expression, its value is
           used as the real filehandle wanted; an undefined scalar will be
           suitably autovivified.  This function calls the underlying
           operating system's open(2) function with the parameters FILENAME,
           MODE, and PERMS.

           Returns true on success and "undef" otherwise.

           The possible values and flag bits of the MODE parameter are system-
           dependent; they are available via the standard module "Fcntl".  See
           the documentation of your operating system's open(2) syscall to see
           which values and flag bits are available.  You may combine several
           flags using the "|"-operator.

           Some of the most common values are "O_RDONLY" for opening the file
           in read-only mode, "O_WRONLY" for opening the file in write-only
           mode, and "O_RDWR" for opening the file in read-write mode.

           For historical reasons, some values work on almost every system
           supported by Perl: 0 means read-only, 1 means write-only, and 2
           means read/write.  We know that these values do not work under
           OS/390 and on the Macintosh; you probably don't want to use them in
           new code.

           If the file named by FILENAME does not exist and the "open" call
           creates it (typically because MODE includes the "O_CREAT" flag),
           then the value of PERMS specifies the permissions of the newly
           created file.  If you omit the PERMS argument to "sysopen", Perl
           uses the octal value 0666.  These permission values need to be in
           octal, and are modified by your process's current "umask".

           In many systems the "O_EXCL" flag is available for opening files in
           exclusive mode.  This is not locking: exclusiveness means here that
           if the file already exists, "sysopen" fails.  "O_EXCL" may not work
           on network filesystems, and has no effect unless the "O_CREAT" flag
           is set as well.  Setting "O_CREAT|O_EXCL" prevents the file from
           being opened if it is a symbolic link.  It does not protect against
           symbolic links in the file's path.

           Sometimes you may want to truncate an already-existing file.  This
           can be done using the "O_TRUNC" flag.  The behavior of "O_TRUNC"
           with "O_RDONLY" is undefined.

           You should seldom if ever use 0644 as argument to "sysopen",
           because that takes away the user's option to have a more permissive
           umask.  Better to omit it.  See "umask" for more on this.

           Note that under Perls older than 5.8.0, "sysopen" depends on the
           fdopen(3) C library function.  On many Unix systems, fdopen(3) is
           known to fail when file descriptors exceed a certain value,
           typically 255.  If you need more file descriptors than that,
           consider using the "POSIX::open" function.  For Perls 5.8.0 and
           later, PerlIO is (most often) the default.

           See perlopentut for a kinder, gentler explanation of opening files.

           Portability issues: "sysopen" in perlport.

       sysread FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
       sysread FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH
           Attempts to read LENGTH bytes of data into variable SCALAR from the
           specified FILEHANDLE, using read(2).  It bypasses buffered IO, so
           mixing this with other kinds of reads, "print", "write", "seek",
           "tell", or "eof" can cause confusion because the perlio or stdio
           layers usually buffer data.  Returns the number of bytes actually
           read, 0 at end of file, or undef if there was an error (in the
           latter case $! is also set).  SCALAR will be grown or shrunk so
           that the last byte actually read is the last byte of the scalar
           after the read.

           An OFFSET may be specified to place the read data at some place in
           the string other than the beginning.  A negative OFFSET specifies
           placement at that many characters counting backwards from the end
           of the string.  A positive OFFSET greater than the length of SCALAR
           results in the string being padded to the required size with "\0"
           bytes before the result of the read is appended.

           There is no syseof() function, which is ok, since "eof" doesn't
           work well on device files (like ttys) anyway.  Use "sysread" and
           check for a return value of 0 to decide whether you're done.

           Note that if the filehandle has been marked as ":utf8", "sysread"
           will throw an exception.  The ":encoding(...)" layer implicitly
           introduces the ":utf8" layer.  See "binmode", "open", and the open
           pragma.

       sysseek FILEHANDLE,POSITION,WHENCE
           Sets FILEHANDLE's system position in bytes using lseek(2).
           FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the name of the
           filehandle.  The values for WHENCE are 0 to set the new position to
           POSITION; 1 to set it to the current position plus POSITION; and 2
           to set it to EOF plus POSITION, typically negative.

           Note the emphasis on bytes: even if the filehandle has been set to
           operate on characters (for example using the ":encoding(UTF-8)" I/O
           layer), the "seek", "tell", and "sysseek" family of functions use
           byte offsets, not character offsets, because seeking to a character
           offset would be very slow in a UTF-8 file.

           "sysseek" bypasses normal buffered IO, so mixing it with reads
           other than "sysread" (for example "readline" or "read"), "print",
           "write", "seek", "tell", or "eof" may cause confusion.

           For WHENCE, you may also use the constants "SEEK_SET", "SEEK_CUR",
           and "SEEK_END" (start of the file, current position, end of the
           file) from the Fcntl module.  Use of the constants is also more
           portable than relying on 0, 1, and 2.  For example to define a
           "systell" function:

               use Fcntl 'SEEK_CUR';
               sub systell { sysseek($_[0], 0, SEEK_CUR) }

           Returns the new position, or the undefined value on failure.  A
           position of zero is returned as the string "0 but true"; thus
           "sysseek" returns true on success and false on failure, yet you can
           still easily determine the new position.

       system LIST
       system PROGRAM LIST
           Does exactly the same thing as "exec", except that a fork is done
           first and the parent process waits for the child process to exit.
           Note that argument processing varies depending on the number of
           arguments.  If there is more than one argument in LIST, or if LIST
           is an array with more than one value, starts the program given by
           the first element of the list with arguments given by the rest of
           the list.  If there is only one scalar argument, the argument is
           checked for shell metacharacters, and if there are any, the entire
           argument is passed to the system's command shell for parsing (this
           is "/bin/sh -c" on Unix platforms, but varies on other platforms).
           If there are no shell metacharacters in the argument, it is split
           into words and passed directly to "execvp", which is more
           efficient.  On Windows, only the "system PROGRAM LIST" syntax will
           reliably avoid using the shell; "system LIST", even with more than
           one element, will fall back to the shell if the first spawn fails.

           Perl will attempt to flush all files opened for output before any
           operation that may do a fork, but this may not be supported on some
           platforms (see perlport).  To be safe, you may need to set $|
           ($AUTOFLUSH in English) or call the "autoflush" method of
           "IO::Handle" on any open handles.

           The return value is the exit status of the program as returned by
           the "wait" call.  To get the actual exit value, shift right by
           eight (see below).  See also "exec".  This is not what you want to
           use to capture the output from a command; for that you should use
           merely backticks or "qx//", as described in "`STRING`" in perlop.
           Return value of -1 indicates a failure to start the program or an
           error of the wait(2) system call (inspect $! for the reason).

           If you'd like to make "system" (and many other bits of Perl) die on
           error, have a look at the autodie pragma.

           Like "exec", "system" allows you to lie to a program about its name
           if you use the "system PROGRAM LIST" syntax.  Again, see "exec".

           Since "SIGINT" and "SIGQUIT" are ignored during the execution of
           "system", if you expect your program to terminate on receipt of
           these signals you will need to arrange to do so yourself based on
           the return value.

               my @args = ("command", "arg1", "arg2");
               system(@args) == 0
                   or die "system @args failed: $?";

           If you'd like to manually inspect "system"'s failure, you can check
           all possible failure modes by inspecting $? like this:

               if ($? == -1) {
                   print "failed to execute: $!\n";
               }
               elsif ($? & 127) {
                   printf "child died with signal %d, %s coredump\n",
                       ($? & 127),  ($? & 128) ? 'with' : 'without';
               }
               else {
                   printf "child exited with value %d\n", $? >> 8;
               }

           Alternatively, you may inspect the value of
           "${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}" with the "W*()" calls from the POSIX
           module.

           When "system"'s arguments are executed indirectly by the shell,
           results and return codes are subject to its quirks.  See "`STRING`"
           in perlop and "exec" for details.

           Since "system" does a "fork" and "wait" it may affect a "SIGCHLD"
           handler.  See perlipc for details.

           Portability issues: "system" in perlport.

       syswrite FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
       syswrite FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH
       syswrite FILEHANDLE,SCALAR
           Attempts to write LENGTH bytes of data from variable SCALAR to the
           specified FILEHANDLE, using write(2).  If LENGTH is not specified,
           writes whole SCALAR.  It bypasses buffered IO, so mixing this with
           reads (other than "sysread)"), "print", "write", "seek", "tell", or
           "eof" may cause confusion because the perlio and stdio layers
           usually buffer data.  Returns the number of bytes actually written,
           or "undef" if there was an error (in this case the errno variable
           $! is also set).  If the LENGTH is greater than the data available
           in the SCALAR after the OFFSET, only as much data as is available
           will be written.

           An OFFSET may be specified to write the data from some part of the
           string other than the beginning.  A negative OFFSET specifies
           writing that many characters counting backwards from the end of the
           string.  If SCALAR is of length zero, you can only use an OFFSET of
           0.

           WARNING: If the filehandle is marked ":utf8", "syswrite" will raise
           an exception.  The ":encoding(...)" layer implicitly introduces the
           ":utf8" layer.  Alternately, if the handle is not marked with an
           encoding but you attempt to write characters with code points over
           255, raises an exception.  See "binmode", "open", and the open
           pragma.

       tell FILEHANDLE
       tell
           Returns the current position in bytes for FILEHANDLE, or -1 on
           error.  FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the name
           of the actual filehandle.  If FILEHANDLE is omitted, assumes the
           file last read.

           Note the emphasis on bytes: even if the filehandle has been set to
           operate on characters (for example using the ":encoding(UTF-8)" I/O
           layer), the "seek", "tell", and "sysseek" family of functions use
           byte offsets, not character offsets, because seeking to a character
           offset would be very slow in a UTF-8 file.

           The return value of "tell" for the standard streams like the STDIN
           depends on the operating system: it may return -1 or something
           else.  "tell" on pipes, fifos, and sockets usually returns -1.

           There is no "systell" function.  Use "sysseek($fh, 0, 1)" for that.

           Do not use "tell" (or other buffered I/O operations) on a
           filehandle that has been manipulated by "sysread", "syswrite", or
           "sysseek".  Those functions ignore the buffering, while "tell" does
           not.

       telldir DIRHANDLE
           Returns the current position of the "readdir" routines on
           DIRHANDLE.  Value may be given to "seekdir" to access a particular
           location in a directory.  "telldir" has the same caveats about
           possible directory compaction as the corresponding system library
           routine.

       tie VARIABLE,CLASSNAME,LIST
           This function binds a variable to a package class that will provide
           the implementation for the variable.  VARIABLE is the name of the
           variable to be enchanted.  CLASSNAME is the name of a class
           implementing objects of correct type.  Any additional arguments are
           passed to the appropriate constructor method of the class (meaning
           "TIESCALAR", "TIEHANDLE", "TIEARRAY", or "TIEHASH").  Typically
           these are arguments such as might be passed to the dbm_open(3)
           function of C.  The object returned by the constructor is also
           returned by the "tie" function, which would be useful if you want
           to access other methods in CLASSNAME.

           Note that functions such as "keys" and "values" may return huge
           lists when used on large objects, like DBM files.  You may prefer
           to use the "each" function to iterate over such.  Example:

               # print out history file offsets
               use NDBM_File;
               tie(my %HIST, 'NDBM_File', '/usr/lib/news/history', 1, 0);
               while (my ($key,$val) = each %HIST) {
                   print $key, ' = ', unpack('L', $val), "\n";
               }

           A class implementing a hash should have the following methods:

               TIEHASH classname, LIST
               FETCH this, key
               STORE this, key, value
               DELETE this, key
               CLEAR this
               EXISTS this, key
               FIRSTKEY this
               NEXTKEY this, lastkey
               SCALAR this
               DESTROY this
               UNTIE this

           A class implementing an ordinary array should have the following
           methods:

               TIEARRAY classname, LIST
               FETCH this, key
               STORE this, key, value
               FETCHSIZE this
               STORESIZE this, count
               CLEAR this
               PUSH this, LIST
               POP this
               SHIFT this
               UNSHIFT this, LIST
               SPLICE this, offset, length, LIST
               EXTEND this, count
               DELETE this, key
               EXISTS this, key
               DESTROY this
               UNTIE this

           A class implementing a filehandle should have the following
           methods:

               TIEHANDLE classname, LIST
               READ this, scalar, length, offset
               READLINE this
               GETC this
               WRITE this, scalar, length, offset
               PRINT this, LIST
               PRINTF this, format, LIST
               BINMODE this
               EOF this
               FILENO this
               SEEK this, position, whence
               TELL this
               OPEN this, mode, LIST
               CLOSE this
               DESTROY this
               UNTIE this

           A class implementing a scalar should have the following methods:

               TIESCALAR classname, LIST
               FETCH this,
               STORE this, value
               DESTROY this
               UNTIE this

           Not all methods indicated above need be implemented.  See perltie,
           Tie::Hash, Tie::Array, Tie::Scalar, and Tie::Handle.

           Unlike "dbmopen", the "tie" function will not "use" or "require" a
           module for you; you need to do that explicitly yourself.  See
           DB_File or the Config module for interesting "tie" implementations.

           For further details see perltie, "tied".

       tied VARIABLE
           Returns a reference to the object underlying VARIABLE (the same
           value that was originally returned by the "tie" call that bound the
           variable to a package.)  Returns the undefined value if VARIABLE
           isn't tied to a package.

       time
           Returns the number of non-leap seconds since whatever time the
           system considers to be the epoch, suitable for feeding to "gmtime"
           and "localtime".  On most systems the epoch is 00:00:00 UTC,
           January 1, 1970; a prominent exception being Mac OS Classic which
           uses 00:00:00, January 1, 1904 in the current local time zone for
           its epoch.

           For measuring time in better granularity than one second, use the
           Time::HiRes module from Perl 5.8 onwards (or from CPAN before
           then), or, if you have gettimeofday(2), you may be able to use the
           "syscall" interface of Perl.  See perlfaq8 for details.

           For date and time processing look at the many related modules on
           CPAN.  For a comprehensive date and time representation look at the
           DateTime module.

       times
           Returns a four-element list giving the user and system times in
           seconds for this process and any exited children of this process.

               my ($user,$system,$cuser,$csystem) = times;

           In scalar context, "times" returns $user.

           Children's times are only included for terminated children.

           Portability issues: "times" in perlport.

       tr///
           The transliteration operator.  Same as "y///".  See "Quote-Like
           Operators" in perlop.

       truncate FILEHANDLE,LENGTH
       truncate EXPR,LENGTH
           Truncates the file opened on FILEHANDLE, or named by EXPR, to the
           specified length.  Raises an exception if truncate isn't
           implemented on your system.  Returns true if successful, "undef" on
           error.

           The behavior is undefined if LENGTH is greater than the length of
           the file.

           The position in the file of FILEHANDLE is left unchanged.  You may
           want to call seek before writing to the file.

           Portability issues: "truncate" in perlport.

       uc EXPR
       uc  Returns an uppercased version of EXPR.  This is the internal
           function implementing the "\U" escape in double-quoted strings.  It
           does not attempt to do titlecase mapping on initial letters.  See
           "ucfirst" for that.

           If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.

           This function behaves the same way under various pragmas, such as
           in a locale, as "lc" does.

       ucfirst EXPR
       ucfirst
           Returns the value of EXPR with the first character in uppercase
           (titlecase in Unicode).  This is the internal function implementing
           the "\u" escape in double-quoted strings.

           If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.

           This function behaves the same way under various pragmas, such as
           in a locale, as "lc" does.

       umask EXPR
       umask
           Sets the umask for the process to EXPR and returns the previous
           value.  If EXPR is omitted, merely returns the current umask.

           The Unix permission "rwxr-x---" is represented as three sets of
           three bits, or three octal digits: 0750 (the leading 0 indicates
           octal and isn't one of the digits).  The "umask" value is such a
           number representing disabled permissions bits.  The permission (or
           "mode") values you pass "mkdir" or "sysopen" are modified by your
           umask, so even if you tell "sysopen" to create a file with
           permissions 0777, if your umask is 0022, then the file will
           actually be created with permissions 0755.  If your "umask" were
           0027 (group can't write; others can't read, write, or execute),
           then passing "sysopen" 0666 would create a file with mode 0640
           (because "0666 &~ 027" is 0640).

           Here's some advice: supply a creation mode of 0666 for regular
           files (in "sysopen") and one of 0777 for directories (in "mkdir")
           and executable files.  This gives users the freedom of choice: if
           they want protected files, they might choose process umasks of 022,
           027, or even the particularly antisocial mask of 077.  Programs
           should rarely if ever make policy decisions better left to the
           user.  The exception to this is when writing files that should be
           kept private: mail files, web browser cookies, .rhosts files, and
           so on.

           If umask(2) is not implemented on your system and you are trying to
           restrict access for yourself (i.e., "(EXPR & 0700) > 0"), raises an
           exception.  If umask(2) is not implemented and you are not trying
           to restrict access for yourself, returns "undef".

           Remember that a umask is a number, usually given in octal; it is
           not a string of octal digits.  See also "oct", if all you have is a
           string.

           Portability issues: "umask" in perlport.

       undef EXPR
       undef
           Undefines the value of EXPR, which must be an lvalue.  Use only on
           a scalar value, an array (using "@"), a hash (using "%"), a
           subroutine (using "&"), or a typeglob (using "*").  Saying "undef
           $hash{$key}" will probably not do what you expect on most
           predefined variables or DBM list values, so don't do that; see
           "delete".  Always returns the undefined value.  You can omit the
           EXPR, in which case nothing is undefined, but you still get an
           undefined value that you could, for instance, return from a
           subroutine, assign to a variable, or pass as a parameter.
           Examples:

               undef $foo;
               undef $bar{'blurfl'};      # Compare to: delete $bar{'blurfl'};
               undef @ary;
               undef %hash;
               undef &mysub;
               undef *xyz;       # destroys $xyz, @xyz, %xyz, &xyz, etc.
               return (wantarray ? (undef, $errmsg) : undef) if $they_blew_it;
               select undef, undef, undef, 0.25;
               my ($x, $y, undef, $z) = foo();    # Ignore third value returned

           Note that this is a unary operator, not a list operator.

       unlink LIST
       unlink
           Deletes a list of files.  On success, it returns the number of
           files it successfully deleted.  On failure, it returns false and
           sets $! (errno):

               my $unlinked = unlink 'a', 'b', 'c';
               unlink @goners;
               unlink glob "*.bak";

           On error, "unlink" will not tell you which files it could not
           remove.  If you want to know which files you could not remove, try
           them one at a time:

                foreach my $file ( @goners ) {
                    unlink $file or warn "Could not unlink $file: $!";
                }

           Note: "unlink" will not attempt to delete directories unless you
           are superuser and the -U flag is supplied to Perl.  Even if these
           conditions are met, be warned that unlinking a directory can
           inflict damage on your filesystem.  Finally, using "unlink" on
           directories is not supported on many operating systems.  Use
           "rmdir" instead.

           If LIST is omitted, "unlink" uses $_.

       unpack TEMPLATE,EXPR
       unpack TEMPLATE
           "unpack" does the reverse of "pack": it takes a string and expands
           it out into a list of values.  (In scalar context, it returns
           merely the first value produced.)

           If EXPR is omitted, unpacks the $_ string.  See perlpacktut for an
           introduction to this function.

           The string is broken into chunks described by the TEMPLATE.  Each
           chunk is converted separately to a value.  Typically, either the
           string is a result of "pack", or the characters of the string
           represent a C structure of some kind.

           The TEMPLATE has the same format as in the "pack" function.  Here's
           a subroutine that does substring:

               sub substr {
                   my ($what, $where, $howmuch) = @_;
                   unpack("x$where a$howmuch", $what);
               }

           and then there's

               sub ordinal { unpack("W",$_[0]); } # same as ord()

           In addition to fields allowed in "pack", you may prefix a field
           with a %<number> to indicate that you want a <number>-bit checksum
           of the items instead of the items themselves.  Default is a 16-bit
           checksum.  The checksum is calculated by summing numeric values of
           expanded values (for string fields the sum of "ord($char)" is
           taken; for bit fields the sum of zeroes and ones).

           For example, the following computes the same number as the System V
           sum program:

               my $checksum = do {
                   local $/;  # slurp!
                   unpack("%32W*", readline) % 65535;
               };

           The following efficiently counts the number of set bits in a bit
           vector:

               my $setbits = unpack("%32b*", $selectmask);

           The "p" and "P" formats should be used with care.  Since Perl has
           no way of checking whether the value passed to "unpack" corresponds
           to a valid memory location, passing a pointer value that's not
           known to be valid is likely to have disastrous consequences.

           If there are more pack codes or if the repeat count of a field or a
           group is larger than what the remainder of the input string allows,
           the result is not well defined: the repeat count may be decreased,
           or "unpack" may produce empty strings or zeros, or it may raise an
           exception.  If the input string is longer than one described by the
           TEMPLATE, the remainder of that input string is ignored.

           See "pack" for more examples and notes.

       unshift ARRAY,LIST
           Does the opposite of a "shift".  Or the opposite of a "push",
           depending on how you look at it.  Prepends list to the front of the
           array and returns the new number of elements in the array.

               unshift(@ARGV, '-e') unless $ARGV[0] =~ /^-/;

           Note the LIST is prepended whole, not one element at a time, so the
           prepended elements stay in the same order.  Use "reverse" to do the
           reverse.

           Starting with Perl 5.14, an experimental feature allowed "unshift"
           to take a scalar expression. This experiment has been deemed
           unsuccessful, and was removed as of Perl 5.24.

       untie VARIABLE
           Breaks the binding between a variable and a package.  (See tie.)
           Has no effect if the variable is not tied.

       use Module VERSION LIST
       use Module VERSION
       use Module LIST
       use Module
       use VERSION
           Imports some semantics into the current package from the named
           module, generally by aliasing certain subroutine or variable names
           into your package.  It is exactly equivalent to

               BEGIN { require Module; Module->import( LIST ); }

           except that Module must be a bareword.  The importation can be made
           conditional by using the if module.

           In the "use VERSION" form, VERSION may be either a v-string such as
           v5.24.1, which will be compared to $^V (aka $PERL_VERSION), or a
           numeric argument of the form 5.024001, which will be compared to
           $].  An exception is raised if VERSION is greater than the version
           of the current Perl interpreter; Perl will not attempt to parse the
           rest of the file.  Compare with "require", which can do a similar
           check at run time.  Symmetrically, "no VERSION" allows you to
           specify that you want a version of Perl older than the specified
           one.

           Specifying VERSION as a numeric argument of the form 5.024001
           should generally be avoided as older less readable syntax compared
           to v5.24.1. Before perl 5.8.0 released in 2002 the more verbose
           numeric form was the only supported syntax, which is why you might
           see it in

               use v5.24.1;    # compile time version check
               use 5.24.1;     # ditto
               use 5.024_001;  # ditto; older syntax compatible with perl 5.6

           This is often useful if you need to check the current Perl version
           before "use"ing library modules that won't work with older versions
           of Perl.  (We try not to do this more than we have to.)

           "use VERSION" also lexically enables all features available in the
           requested version as defined by the feature pragma, disabling any
           features not in the requested version's feature bundle.  See
           feature.  Similarly, if the specified Perl version is greater than
           or equal to 5.12.0, strictures are enabled lexically as with "use
           strict".  Any explicit use of "use strict" or "no strict" overrides
           "use VERSION", even if it comes before it.  Later use of "use
           VERSION" will override all behavior of a previous "use VERSION",
           possibly removing the "strict" and "feature" added by "use
           VERSION".  "use VERSION" does not load the feature.pm or strict.pm
           files.

           The "BEGIN" forces the "require" and "import" to happen at compile
           time.  The "require" makes sure the module is loaded into memory if
           it hasn't been yet.  The "import" is not a builtin; it's just an
           ordinary static method call into the "Module" package to tell the
           module to import the list of features back into the current
           package.  The module can implement its "import" method any way it
           likes, though most modules just choose to derive their "import"
           method via inheritance from the "Exporter" class that is defined in
           the "Exporter" module.  See Exporter.  If no "import" method can be
           found, then the call is skipped, even if there is an AUTOLOAD
           method.

           If you do not want to call the package's "import" method (for
           instance, to stop your namespace from being altered), explicitly
           supply the empty list:

               use Module ();

           That is exactly equivalent to

               BEGIN { require Module }

           If the VERSION argument is present between Module and LIST, then
           the "use" will call the "VERSION" method in class Module with the
           given version as an argument:

               use Module 12.34;

           is equivalent to:

               BEGIN { require Module; Module->VERSION(12.34) }

           The default "VERSION" method, inherited from the "UNIVERSAL" class,
           croaks if the given version is larger than the value of the
           variable $Module::VERSION.

           The VERSION argument cannot be an arbitrary expression.  It only
           counts as a VERSION argument if it is a version number literal,
           starting with either a digit or "v" followed by a digit.  Anything
           that doesn't look like a version literal will be parsed as the
           start of the LIST.  Nevertheless, many attempts to use an arbitrary
           expression as a VERSION argument will appear to work, because
           Exporter's "import" method handles numeric arguments specially,
           performing version checks rather than treating them as things to
           export.

           Again, there is a distinction between omitting LIST ("import"
           called with no arguments) and an explicit empty LIST "()" ("import"
           not called).  Note that there is no comma after VERSION!

           Because this is a wide-open interface, pragmas (compiler
           directives) are also implemented this way.  Some of the currently
           implemented pragmas are:

               use constant;
               use diagnostics;
               use integer;
               use sigtrap  qw(SEGV BUS);
               use strict   qw(subs vars refs);
               use subs     qw(afunc blurfl);
               use warnings qw(all);
               use sort     qw(stable);

           Some of these pseudo-modules import semantics into the current
           block scope (like "strict" or "integer", unlike ordinary modules,
           which import symbols into the current package (which are effective
           through the end of the file).

           Because "use" takes effect at compile time, it doesn't respect the
           ordinary flow control of the code being compiled.  In particular,
           putting a "use" inside the false branch of a conditional doesn't
           prevent it from being processed.  If a module or pragma only needs
           to be loaded conditionally, this can be done using the if pragma:

               use if $] < 5.008, "utf8";
               use if WANT_WARNINGS, warnings => qw(all);

           There's a corresponding "no" declaration that unimports meanings
           imported by "use", i.e., it calls "Module->unimport(LIST)" instead
           of "import".  It behaves just as "import" does with VERSION, an
           omitted or empty LIST, or no unimport method being found.

               no integer;
               no strict 'refs';
               no warnings;

           Care should be taken when using the "no VERSION" form of "no".  It
           is only meant to be used to assert that the running Perl is of a
           earlier version than its argument and not to undo the feature-
           enabling side effects of "use VERSION".

           See perlmodlib for a list of standard modules and pragmas.  See
           perlrun for the "-M" and "-m" command-line options to Perl that
           give "use" functionality from the command-line.

       utime LIST
           Changes the access and modification times on each file of a list of
           files.  The first two elements of the list must be the NUMERIC
           access and modification times, in that order.  Returns the number
           of files successfully changed.  The inode change time of each file
           is set to the current time.  For example, this code has the same
           effect as the Unix touch(1) command when the files already exist
           and belong to the user running the program:

               #!/usr/bin/perl
               my $atime = my $mtime = time;
               utime $atime, $mtime, @ARGV;

           Since Perl 5.8.0, if the first two elements of the list are
           "undef", the utime(2) syscall from your C library is called with a
           null second argument.  On most systems, this will set the file's
           access and modification times to the current time (i.e., equivalent
           to the example above) and will work even on files you don't own
           provided you have write permission:

               for my $file (@ARGV) {
                   utime(undef, undef, $file)
                       || warn "Couldn't touch $file: $!";
               }

           Under NFS this will use the time of the NFS server, not the time of
           the local machine.  If there is a time synchronization problem, the
           NFS server and local machine will have different times.  The Unix
           touch(1) command will in fact normally use this form instead of the
           one shown in the first example.

           Passing only one of the first two elements as "undef" is equivalent
           to passing a 0 and will not have the effect described when both are
           "undef".  This also triggers an uninitialized warning.

           On systems that support futimes(2), you may pass filehandles among
           the files.  On systems that don't support futimes(2), passing
           filehandles raises an exception.  Filehandles must be passed as
           globs or glob references to be recognized; barewords are considered
           filenames.

           Portability issues: "utime" in perlport.

       values HASH
       values ARRAY
           In list context, returns a list consisting of all the values of the
           named hash.  In Perl 5.12 or later only, will also return a list of
           the values of an array; prior to that release, attempting to use an
           array argument will produce a syntax error.  In scalar context,
           returns the number of values.

           Hash entries are returned in an apparently random order.  The
           actual random order is specific to a given hash; the exact same
           series of operations on two hashes may result in a different order
           for each hash.  Any insertion into the hash may change the order,
           as will any deletion, with the exception that the most recent key
           returned by "each" or "keys" may be deleted without changing the
           order.  So long as a given hash is unmodified you may rely on
           "keys", "values" and "each" to repeatedly return the same order as
           each other.  See "Algorithmic Complexity Attacks" in perlsec for
           details on why hash order is randomized.  Aside from the guarantees
           provided here the exact details of Perl's hash algorithm and the
           hash traversal order are subject to change in any release of Perl.
           Tied hashes may behave differently to Perl's hashes with respect to
           changes in order on insertion and deletion of items.

           As a side effect, calling "values" resets the HASH or ARRAY's
           internal iterator (see "each") before yielding the values.  In
           particular, calling "values" in void context resets the iterator
           with no other overhead.

           Apart from resetting the iterator, "values @array" in list context
           is the same as plain @array.  (We recommend that you use void
           context "keys @array" for this, but reasoned that taking "values
           @array" out would require more documentation than leaving it in.)

           Note that the values are not copied, which means modifying them
           will modify the contents of the hash:

               for (values %hash)      { s/foo/bar/g }  # modifies %hash values
               for (@hash{keys %hash}) { s/foo/bar/g }  # same

           Starting with Perl 5.14, an experimental feature allowed "values"
           to take a scalar expression. This experiment has been deemed
           unsuccessful, and was removed as of Perl 5.24.

           To avoid confusing would-be users of your code who are running
           earlier versions of Perl with mysterious syntax errors, put this
           sort of thing at the top of your file to signal that your code will
           work only on Perls of a recent vintage:

               use 5.012;  # so keys/values/each work on arrays

           See also "keys", "each", and "sort".

       vec EXPR,OFFSET,BITS
           Treats the string in EXPR as a bit vector made up of elements of
           width BITS and returns the value of the element specified by OFFSET
           as an unsigned integer.  BITS therefore specifies the number of
           bits that are reserved for each element in the bit vector.  This
           must be a power of two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your platform
           supports that).

           If BITS is 8, "elements" coincide with bytes of the input string.

           If BITS is 16 or more, bytes of the input string are grouped into
           chunks of size BITS/8, and each group is converted to a number as
           with "pack"/"unpack" with big-endian formats "n"/"N" (and
           analogously for BITS==64).  See "pack" for details.

           If bits is 4 or less, the string is broken into bytes, then the
           bits of each byte are broken into 8/BITS groups.  Bits of a byte
           are numbered in a little-endian-ish way, as in 0x01, 0x02, 0x04,
           0x08, 0x10, 0x20, 0x40, 0x80.  For example, breaking the single
           input byte "chr(0x36)" into two groups gives a list "(0x6, 0x3)";
           breaking it into 4 groups gives "(0x2, 0x1, 0x3, 0x0)".

           "vec" may also be assigned to, in which case parentheses are needed
           to give the expression the correct precedence as in

               vec($image, $max_x * $x + $y, 8) = 3;

           If the selected element is outside the string, the value 0 is
           returned.  If an element off the end of the string is written to,
           Perl will first extend the string with sufficiently many zero
           bytes.   It is an error to try to write off the beginning of the
           string (i.e., negative OFFSET).

           If the string happens to be encoded as UTF-8 internally (and thus
           has the UTF8 flag set), "vec" tries to convert it to use a one-
           byte-per-character internal representation. However, if the string
           contains characters with values of 256 or higher, that conversion
           will fail, and a deprecation message will be raised.  In that
           situation, "vec" will operate on the underlying buffer regardless,
           in its internal UTF-8 representation.  In Perl 5.32, this will be a
           fatal error.

           Strings created with "vec" can also be manipulated with the logical
           operators "|", "&", "^", and "~".  These operators will assume a
           bit vector operation is desired when both operands are strings.
           See "Bitwise String Operators" in perlop.

           The following code will build up an ASCII string saying
           'PerlPerlPerl'.  The comments show the string after each step.
           Note that this code works in the same way on big-endian or little-
           endian machines.

               my $foo = '';
               vec($foo,  0, 32) = 0x5065726C; # 'Perl'

               # $foo eq "Perl" eq "\x50\x65\x72\x6C", 32 bits
               print vec($foo, 0, 8);  # prints 80 == 0x50 == ord('P')

               vec($foo,  2, 16) = 0x5065; # 'PerlPe'
               vec($foo,  3, 16) = 0x726C; # 'PerlPerl'
               vec($foo,  8,  8) = 0x50;   # 'PerlPerlP'
               vec($foo,  9,  8) = 0x65;   # 'PerlPerlPe'
               vec($foo, 20,  4) = 2;      # 'PerlPerlPe'   . "\x02"
               vec($foo, 21,  4) = 7;      # 'PerlPerlPer'
                                              # 'r' is "\x72"
               vec($foo, 45,  2) = 3;      # 'PerlPerlPer'  . "\x0c"
               vec($foo, 93,  1) = 1;      # 'PerlPerlPer'  . "\x2c"
               vec($foo, 94,  1) = 1;      # 'PerlPerlPerl'
                                              # 'l' is "\x6c"

           To transform a bit vector into a string or list of 0's and 1's, use
           these:

               my $bits = unpack("b*", $vector);
               my @bits = split(//, unpack("b*", $vector));

           If you know the exact length in bits, it can be used in place of
           the "*".

           Here is an example to illustrate how the bits actually fall in
           place:

             #!/usr/bin/perl -wl

             print <<'EOT';
                                               0         1         2         3
                                unpack("V",$_) 01234567890123456789012345678901
             ------------------------------------------------------------------
             EOT

             for $w (0..3) {
                 $width = 2**$w;
                 for ($shift=0; $shift < $width; ++$shift) {
                     for ($off=0; $off < 32/$width; ++$off) {
                         $str = pack("B*", "0"x32);
                         $bits = (1<<$shift);
                         vec($str, $off, $width) = $bits;
                         $res = unpack("b*",$str);
                         $val = unpack("V", $str);
                         write;
                     }
                 }
             }

             format STDOUT =
             vec($_,@#,@#) = @<< == @######### @>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
             $off, $width, $bits, $val, $res
             .
             __END__

           Regardless of the machine architecture on which it runs, the
           example above should print the following table:

                                               0         1         2         3
                                unpack("V",$_) 01234567890123456789012345678901
             ------------------------------------------------------------------
             vec($_, 0, 1) = 1   ==          1 10000000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 1) = 1   ==          2 01000000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 1) = 1   ==          4 00100000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 3, 1) = 1   ==          8 00010000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 4, 1) = 1   ==         16 00001000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 5, 1) = 1   ==         32 00000100000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 6, 1) = 1   ==         64 00000010000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 7, 1) = 1   ==        128 00000001000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 8, 1) = 1   ==        256 00000000100000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 9, 1) = 1   ==        512 00000000010000000000000000000000
             vec($_,10, 1) = 1   ==       1024 00000000001000000000000000000000
             vec($_,11, 1) = 1   ==       2048 00000000000100000000000000000000
             vec($_,12, 1) = 1   ==       4096 00000000000010000000000000000000
             vec($_,13, 1) = 1   ==       8192 00000000000001000000000000000000
             vec($_,14, 1) = 1   ==      16384 00000000000000100000000000000000
             vec($_,15, 1) = 1   ==      32768 00000000000000010000000000000000
             vec($_,16, 1) = 1   ==      65536 00000000000000001000000000000000
             vec($_,17, 1) = 1   ==     131072 00000000000000000100000000000000
             vec($_,18, 1) = 1   ==     262144 00000000000000000010000000000000
             vec($_,19, 1) = 1   ==     524288 00000000000000000001000000000000
             vec($_,20, 1) = 1   ==    1048576 00000000000000000000100000000000
             vec($_,21, 1) = 1   ==    2097152 00000000000000000000010000000000
             vec($_,22, 1) = 1   ==    4194304 00000000000000000000001000000000
             vec($_,23, 1) = 1   ==    8388608 00000000000000000000000100000000
             vec($_,24, 1) = 1   ==   16777216 00000000000000000000000010000000
             vec($_,25, 1) = 1   ==   33554432 00000000000000000000000001000000
             vec($_,26, 1) = 1   ==   67108864 00000000000000000000000000100000
             vec($_,27, 1) = 1   ==  134217728 00000000000000000000000000010000
             vec($_,28, 1) = 1   ==  268435456 00000000000000000000000000001000
             vec($_,29, 1) = 1   ==  536870912 00000000000000000000000000000100
             vec($_,30, 1) = 1   == 1073741824 00000000000000000000000000000010
             vec($_,31, 1) = 1   == 2147483648 00000000000000000000000000000001
             vec($_, 0, 2) = 1   ==          1 10000000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 2) = 1   ==          4 00100000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 2) = 1   ==         16 00001000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 3, 2) = 1   ==         64 00000010000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 4, 2) = 1   ==        256 00000000100000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 5, 2) = 1   ==       1024 00000000001000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 6, 2) = 1   ==       4096 00000000000010000000000000000000
             vec($_, 7, 2) = 1   ==      16384 00000000000000100000000000000000
             vec($_, 8, 2) = 1   ==      65536 00000000000000001000000000000000
             vec($_, 9, 2) = 1   ==     262144 00000000000000000010000000000000
             vec($_,10, 2) = 1   ==    1048576 00000000000000000000100000000000
             vec($_,11, 2) = 1   ==    4194304 00000000000000000000001000000000
             vec($_,12, 2) = 1   ==   16777216 00000000000000000000000010000000
             vec($_,13, 2) = 1   ==   67108864 00000000000000000000000000100000
             vec($_,14, 2) = 1   ==  268435456 00000000000000000000000000001000
             vec($_,15, 2) = 1   == 1073741824 00000000000000000000000000000010
             vec($_, 0, 2) = 2   ==          2 01000000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 2) = 2   ==          8 00010000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 2) = 2   ==         32 00000100000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 3, 2) = 2   ==        128 00000001000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 4, 2) = 2   ==        512 00000000010000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 5, 2) = 2   ==       2048 00000000000100000000000000000000
             vec($_, 6, 2) = 2   ==       8192 00000000000001000000000000000000
             vec($_, 7, 2) = 2   ==      32768 00000000000000010000000000000000
             vec($_, 8, 2) = 2   ==     131072 00000000000000000100000000000000
             vec($_, 9, 2) = 2   ==     524288 00000000000000000001000000000000
             vec($_,10, 2) = 2   ==    2097152 00000000000000000000010000000000
             vec($_,11, 2) = 2   ==    8388608 00000000000000000000000100000000
             vec($_,12, 2) = 2   ==   33554432 00000000000000000000000001000000
             vec($_,13, 2) = 2   ==  134217728 00000000000000000000000000010000
             vec($_,14, 2) = 2   ==  536870912 00000000000000000000000000000100
             vec($_,15, 2) = 2   == 2147483648 00000000000000000000000000000001
             vec($_, 0, 4) = 1   ==          1 10000000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 4) = 1   ==         16 00001000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 4) = 1   ==        256 00000000100000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 3, 4) = 1   ==       4096 00000000000010000000000000000000
             vec($_, 4, 4) = 1   ==      65536 00000000000000001000000000000000
             vec($_, 5, 4) = 1   ==    1048576 00000000000000000000100000000000
             vec($_, 6, 4) = 1   ==   16777216 00000000000000000000000010000000
             vec($_, 7, 4) = 1   ==  268435456 00000000000000000000000000001000
             vec($_, 0, 4) = 2   ==          2 01000000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 4) = 2   ==         32 00000100000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 4) = 2   ==        512 00000000010000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 3, 4) = 2   ==       8192 00000000000001000000000000000000
             vec($_, 4, 4) = 2   ==     131072 00000000000000000100000000000000
             vec($_, 5, 4) = 2   ==    2097152 00000000000000000000010000000000
             vec($_, 6, 4) = 2   ==   33554432 00000000000000000000000001000000
             vec($_, 7, 4) = 2   ==  536870912 00000000000000000000000000000100
             vec($_, 0, 4) = 4   ==          4 00100000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 4) = 4   ==         64 00000010000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 4) = 4   ==       1024 00000000001000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 3, 4) = 4   ==      16384 00000000000000100000000000000000
             vec($_, 4, 4) = 4   ==     262144 00000000000000000010000000000000
             vec($_, 5, 4) = 4   ==    4194304 00000000000000000000001000000000
             vec($_, 6, 4) = 4   ==   67108864 00000000000000000000000000100000
             vec($_, 7, 4) = 4   == 1073741824 00000000000000000000000000000010
             vec($_, 0, 4) = 8   ==          8 00010000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 4) = 8   ==        128 00000001000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 4) = 8   ==       2048 00000000000100000000000000000000
             vec($_, 3, 4) = 8   ==      32768 00000000000000010000000000000000
             vec($_, 4, 4) = 8   ==     524288 00000000000000000001000000000000
             vec($_, 5, 4) = 8   ==    8388608 00000000000000000000000100000000
             vec($_, 6, 4) = 8   ==  134217728 00000000000000000000000000010000
             vec($_, 7, 4) = 8   == 2147483648 00000000000000000000000000000001
             vec($_, 0, 8) = 1   ==          1 10000000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 8) = 1   ==        256 00000000100000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 8) = 1   ==      65536 00000000000000001000000000000000
             vec($_, 3, 8) = 1   ==   16777216 00000000000000000000000010000000
             vec($_, 0, 8) = 2   ==          2 01000000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 8) = 2   ==        512 00000000010000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 8) = 2   ==     131072 00000000000000000100000000000000
             vec($_, 3, 8) = 2   ==   33554432 00000000000000000000000001000000
             vec($_, 0, 8) = 4   ==          4 00100000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 8) = 4   ==       1024 00000000001000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 8) = 4   ==     262144 00000000000000000010000000000000
             vec($_, 3, 8) = 4   ==   67108864 00000000000000000000000000100000
             vec($_, 0, 8) = 8   ==          8 00010000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 8) = 8   ==       2048 00000000000100000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 8) = 8   ==     524288 00000000000000000001000000000000
             vec($_, 3, 8) = 8   ==  134217728 00000000000000000000000000010000
             vec($_, 0, 8) = 16  ==         16 00001000000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 8) = 16  ==       4096 00000000000010000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 8) = 16  ==    1048576 00000000000000000000100000000000
             vec($_, 3, 8) = 16  ==  268435456 00000000000000000000000000001000
             vec($_, 0, 8) = 32  ==         32 00000100000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 8) = 32  ==       8192 00000000000001000000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 8) = 32  ==    2097152 00000000000000000000010000000000
             vec($_, 3, 8) = 32  ==  536870912 00000000000000000000000000000100
             vec($_, 0, 8) = 64  ==         64 00000010000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 8) = 64  ==      16384 00000000000000100000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 8) = 64  ==    4194304 00000000000000000000001000000000
             vec($_, 3, 8) = 64  == 1073741824 00000000000000000000000000000010
             vec($_, 0, 8) = 128 ==        128 00000001000000000000000000000000
             vec($_, 1, 8) = 128 ==      32768 00000000000000010000000000000000
             vec($_, 2, 8) = 128 ==    8388608 00000000000000000000000100000000
             vec($_, 3, 8) = 128 == 2147483648 00000000000000000000000000000001

       wait
           Behaves like wait(2) on your system: it waits for a child process
           to terminate and returns the pid of the deceased process, or "-1"
           if there are no child processes.  The status is returned in $? and
           "${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}".  Note that a return value of "-1" could
           mean that child processes are being automatically reaped, as
           described in perlipc.

           If you use "wait" in your handler for $SIG{CHLD}, it may
           accidentally wait for the child created by "qx" or "system".  See
           perlipc for details.

           Portability issues: "wait" in perlport.

       waitpid PID,FLAGS
           Waits for a particular child process to terminate and returns the
           pid of the deceased process, or "-1" if there is no such child
           process.  A non-blocking wait (with WNOHANG in FLAGS) can return 0
           if there are child processes matching PID but none have terminated
           yet.  The status is returned in $? and "${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}".

           A PID of 0 indicates to wait for any child process whose process
           group ID is equal to that of the current process.  A PID of less
           than "-1" indicates to wait for any child process whose process
           group ID is equal to -PID.  A PID of "-1" indicates to wait for any
           child process.

           If you say

               use POSIX ":sys_wait_h";

               my $kid;
               do {
                   $kid = waitpid(-1, WNOHANG);
               } while $kid > 0;

           or

               1 while waitpid(-1, WNOHANG) > 0;

           then you can do a non-blocking wait for all pending zombie
           processes (see "WAIT" in POSIX).  Non-blocking wait is available on
           machines supporting either the waitpid(2) or wait4(2) syscalls.
           However, waiting for a particular pid with FLAGS of 0 is
           implemented everywhere.  (Perl emulates the system call by
           remembering the status values of processes that have exited but
           have not been harvested by the Perl script yet.)

           Note that on some systems, a return value of "-1" could mean that
           child processes are being automatically reaped.  See perlipc for
           details, and for other examples.

           Portability issues: "waitpid" in perlport.

       wantarray
           Returns true if the context of the currently executing subroutine
           or "eval" is looking for a list value.  Returns false if the
           context is looking for a scalar.  Returns the undefined value if
           the context is looking for no value (void context).

               return unless defined wantarray; # don't bother doing more
               my @a = complex_calculation();
               return wantarray ? @a : "@a";

           "wantarray"'s result is unspecified in the top level of a file, in
           a "BEGIN", "UNITCHECK", "CHECK", "INIT" or "END" block, or in a
           "DESTROY" method.

           This function should have been named wantlist() instead.

       warn LIST
           Emits a warning, usually by printing it to "STDERR".  "warn"
           interprets its operand LIST in the same way as "die", but is
           slightly different in what it defaults to when LIST is empty or
           makes an empty string.  If it is empty and $@ already contains an
           exception value then that value is used after appending
           "\t...caught".  If it is empty and $@ is also empty then the string
           "Warning: Something's wrong" is used.

           By default, the exception derived from the operand LIST is
           stringified and printed to "STDERR".  This behaviour can be altered
           by installing a $SIG{__WARN__} handler.  If there is such a handler
           then no message is automatically printed; it is the handler's
           responsibility to deal with the exception as it sees fit (like, for
           instance, converting it into a "die").  Most handlers must
           therefore arrange to actually display the warnings that they are
           not prepared to deal with, by calling "warn" again in the handler.
           Note that this is quite safe and will not produce an endless loop,
           since "__WARN__" hooks are not called from inside one.

           You will find this behavior is slightly different from that of
           $SIG{__DIE__} handlers (which don't suppress the error text, but
           can instead call "die" again to change it).

           Using a "__WARN__" handler provides a powerful way to silence all
           warnings (even the so-called mandatory ones).  An example:

               # wipe out *all* compile-time warnings
               BEGIN { $SIG{'__WARN__'} = sub { warn $_[0] if $DOWARN } }
               my $foo = 10;
               my $foo = 20;          # no warning about duplicate my $foo,
                                      # but hey, you asked for it!
               # no compile-time or run-time warnings before here
               $DOWARN = 1;

               # run-time warnings enabled after here
               warn "\$foo is alive and $foo!";     # does show up

           See perlvar for details on setting %SIG entries and for more
           examples.  See the Carp module for other kinds of warnings using
           its "carp" and "cluck" functions.

       write FILEHANDLE
       write EXPR
       write
           Writes a formatted record (possibly multi-line) to the specified
           FILEHANDLE, using the format associated with that file.  By default
           the format for a file is the one having the same name as the
           filehandle, but the format for the current output channel (see the
           "select" function) may be set explicitly by assigning the name of
           the format to the $~ variable.

           Top of form processing is handled automatically:  if there is
           insufficient room on the current page for the formatted record, the
           page is advanced by writing a form feed and a special top-of-page
           format is used to format the new page header before the record is
           written.  By default, the top-of-page format is the name of the
           filehandle with "_TOP" appended, or "top" in the current package if
           the former does not exist.  This would be a problem with
           autovivified filehandles, but it may be dynamically set to the
           format of your choice by assigning the name to the $^ variable
           while that filehandle is selected.  The number of lines remaining
           on the current page is in variable "$-", which can be set to 0 to
           force a new page.

           If FILEHANDLE is unspecified, output goes to the current default
           output channel, which starts out as STDOUT but may be changed by
           the "select" operator.  If the FILEHANDLE is an EXPR, then the
           expression is evaluated and the resulting string is used to look up
           the name of the FILEHANDLE at run time.  For more on formats, see
           perlform.

           Note that write is not the opposite of "read".  Unfortunately.

       y///
           The transliteration operator.  Same as "tr///".  See "Quote-Like
           Operators" in perlop.

   Non-function Keywords by Cross-reference
       perldata

       __DATA__
       __END__
           These keywords are documented in "Special Literals" in perldata.

       perlmod

       BEGIN
       CHECK
       END
       INIT
       UNITCHECK
           These compile phase keywords are documented in "BEGIN, UNITCHECK,
           CHECK, INIT and END" in perlmod.

       perlobj

       DESTROY
           This method keyword is documented in "Destructors" in perlobj.

       perlop

       and
       cmp
       eq
       ge
       gt
       le
       lt
       ne
       not
       or
       x
       xor These operators are documented in perlop.

       perlsub

       AUTOLOAD
           This keyword is documented in "Autoloading" in perlsub.

       perlsyn

       else
       elsif
       for
       foreach
       if
       unless
       until
       while
           These flow-control keywords are documented in "Compound Statements"
           in perlsyn.

       elseif
           The "else if" keyword is spelled "elsif" in Perl.  There's no
           "elif" or "else if" either.  It does parse "elseif", but only to
           warn you about not using it.

           See the documentation for flow-control keywords in "Compound
           Statements" in perlsyn.

       default
       given
       when
           These flow-control keywords related to the experimental switch
           feature are documented in "Switch Statements" in perlsyn.

perl v5.30.3                      2020-06-07                       PERLFUNC(1)

Man(1) output converted with man2html
list of all man pages