Perl Special Vars Quick Reference

Abhimanyu Singh — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 05:08:47 -0600

`$_`	The default or implicit variable.
`@_`	Subroutine parameters.
`$a` `$b`	sort comparison routine variables.
`@ARGV`	The command-line args.
Regular Expressions
`$`	Regexp parenthetical capture holders.
`$&`	Last successful match (degrades performance).
`${^MATCH}`	Similar to `$&` without performance penalty. Requires /p modifier.
$`	Prematch for last successful match string (degrades performance).
`${^PREMATCH}`	Similar to $` without performance penalty. Requires `/p` modifier.
`$'`	Postmatch for last successful match string (degrades performance).
`${^POSTMATCH}`	Similar to `$'` without performance penalty. Requires `/p` modifier.
`$+`	Last paren match.
`$^N`	Last closed paren match (last submatch).
`@+`	Offsets of ends of successful submatches in scope.
`@-`	Offsets of starts of successful submatches in scope.
`%+`	Like `@+`, but for named submatches.
`%-`	Like `@-`, but for named submatches.
`$^R`	Last regexp (?{code}) result.
`${^RE_DEBUG_FLAGS}`	Current value of regexp debugging flags. See `use re 'debug';`
`${^RE_TRIE_MAXBUF}`	Control memory allocations for RE optimizations for large alternations.
Encoding
`${^ENCODING}`	The object reference to the Encode object, used to convert the source code to Unicode.
`${^OPEN}`	Internal use: \0 separated Input / Output layer information.
`${^UNICODE}`	Read-only Unicode settings.
`${^UTF8CACHE}`	State of the internal UTF-8 offset caching code.
`${^UTF8LOCALE}`	Indicates whether UTF8 locale was detected at startup.
IO and Separators
`$.`	Current line number (or record number) of most recent filehandle.
`$/`	Input record separator.
`$\|`	Output autoflush. 1=autoflush, 0=default. Applies to currently selected handle.
`$,`	Output field separator (lists)
`$\`	Output record separator.
`$"`	Output list separator. (interpolated lists)
`$;`	Subscript separator. (Use a real multidimensional array instead.)
Formats
`$%`	Page number for currently selected output channel.
`$=`	Current page length.
`$-`	Number of lines left on page.
`$~`	Format name.
`$^`	Name of top-of-page format.
`$:`	Format line break characters
`$^L`	Form feed (default "\f").
`$^A`	Format Accumulator
Status Reporting
`$?`	Child error. Status code of most recent system call or pipe.
`$!`	Operating System Error. (What just went 'bang'?)
`%!`	Error number hash
`$^E`	Extended Operating System Error (Extra error explanation).
`$@`	Eval error.
`${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}`	Native status returned by the last pipe close, backtick (`` ) command, successful call to wait() or waitpid(), or from the system() operator.
ID's and Process Information
`$$`	Process ID
`$<`	Real user id of process.
`$>`	Effective user id of process.
`$(`	Real group id of process.
`$)`	Effective group id of process.
`$0`	Program name.
`$^O`	Operating System name.
Perl Status Info
`$]`	Old: Version and patch number of perl interpreter. Deprecated.
`$^C`	Current value of flag associated with -c switch.
`$^D`	Current value of debugging flags
`$^F`	Maximum system file descriptor.
`$^I`	Value of the -i (inplace edit) switch.
`$^M`	Emergency Memory pool.
`$^P`	Internal variable for debugging support.
`$^R`	Last regexp (?{code}) result.
`$^S`	Exceptions being caught. (eval)
`$^T`	Base time of program start.
`$^V`	Perl version.
`$^W`	Status of -w switch
`${^WARNING_BITS}`	Current set of warning checks enabled by `use warnings;`
`$^X`	Perl executable name.
`${^GLOBAL_PHASE}`	Current phase of the Perl interpreter.
`$^H`	Internal use only: Hook into Lexical Scoping.
`%^H`	Internaluse only: Useful to implement scoped pragmas.
`${^TAINT}`	Taint mode read-only flag.
`${^WIN32_SLOPPY_STAT}`	If true on Windows `stat()` won't try to open the file.
Command Line Args
`ARGV`	Filehandle iterates over files from command line (see also `<>`).
`$ARGV`	Name of current file when reading <>
`@ARGV`	List of command line args.
`ARGVOUT`	Output filehandle for -i switch
Miscellaneous
`@F`	Autosplit (-a mode) recipient.
`@INC`	List of library paths.
`%INC`	Keys are filenames, values are paths to modules included via `use, require,` or `do`.
`%ENV`	Hash containing current environment variables
`%SIG`	Signal handlers.
`$[`	Array and substr first element (Deprecated!).

See perlvar for detailed descriptions of each of these (and a few more) special variables.

BOL: Perl Special Vars Quick Reference

Perl Special Vars Quick Reference