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.IX Title "English 3p"
.TH English 3p 2023-09-25 "perl v5.38.0" "Perl Programmers Reference Guide"
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.\" way too many mistakes in technical documents.
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.SH NAME
English \- use nice English (or awk) names for ugly punctuation variables
.SH SYNOPSIS
.IX Header "SYNOPSIS"
.Vb 6
\&    use English;
\&    use English qw( \-no_match_vars ) ;  # Avoids regex performance
\&                                        # penalty in perl 5.18 and
\&                                        # earlier
\&    ...
\&    if ($ERRNO =~ /denied/) { ... }
.Ve
.SH DESCRIPTION
.IX Header "DESCRIPTION"
This module provides aliases for the built-in variables whose
names no one seems to like to read.  Variables with side-effects
which get triggered just by accessing them (like \f(CW$0\fR) will still 
be affected.
.PP
For those variables that have an \fBawk\fR version, both long
and short English alternatives are provided.  For example, 
the \f(CW$/\fR variable can be referred to either \f(CW$RS\fR or 
\&\f(CW$INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR\fR if you are using the English module.
.PP
See perlvar for a complete list of these.
.SH PERFORMANCE
.IX Header "PERFORMANCE"
NOTE: This was fixed in perl 5.20.  Mentioning these three variables no
longer makes a speed difference.  This section still applies if your code
is to run on perl 5.18 or earlier.
.PP
This module can provoke sizeable inefficiencies for regular expressions,
due to unfortunate implementation details.  If performance matters in
your application and you don't need \f(CW$PREMATCH\fR, \f(CW$MATCH\fR, or \f(CW$POSTMATCH\fR,
try doing
.PP
.Vb 1
\&   use English qw( \-no_match_vars ) ;
.Ve
.PP
\&.  \fBIt is especially important to do this in modules to avoid penalizing
all applications which use them.\fR
