[prog] Perl meta data

[k.clair]

Hello,

One of the things that makes perl so fast and easy is that for normal
day to day programming you don't really need to worry about those
distinctions.  There are just strings and integers.  And, to boot, perl
will actually convert strings to integers (and vice versa) as needed --
so if you have a string that consists of a number and you use a
function that operates on integers (like + for example), you can use
that string in the addition, and perl will convert it to an integer.

Or maybe you are doing something where you actually need to get into
perl's internal variable storage structure? It is actually stored in a
hash that you *can* access, though i don't remember the details of that
off the top of my head.

Sorry to be a little vague, but I'm not quite sure what you are asking,
exactly.

Kristina

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 09:26:42AM -0600, ed orphan wrote:
- I'm a C programmer and I'm rather baffled by Perl's meta data.
- In C we have strict definitions for data. For example,
- int for a simple non-decimal integer ( eg 5 )
-  float for decimal numbers (eg 5.0991 ), char for characters,
- etc. But in Perl there is this thing called a meta file or meta data.
- Can anyone explain this concept to me? And how would I
- convert this meta stuff to use in a C program?
- 
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