Perl language structure: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:50, 30 December 2020

Revision as of 20:22, 21 February 2021

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The second line in the canonical form includes a semicolon, which is used to separate statements in Perl. With only a single statement in a block or file, a separator is unnecessary, so it can be omitted from the minimal form of the program—or more generally from the final statement in any block or file. The canonical form includes it, because it is common to terminate every statement even when it is unnecessary to do so, as this makes editing easier: code can be added to, or moved away from, the end of a block or file without having to adjust semicolons.

Version 5.1001 of Perl introduces a <code>say</code> function that implicitly appends a newline character to its output, making the minimal "Hello World" program even shorter:

<syntaxhighlight lang="perl">