perlquestion Russ Hi all, <p> Random synapse firing:<br> (Thinking of the next "syllabus entry" for some Perl training I do around work)<br> It occurred to me that Perl has $_ (default variable), @_ ("my" arguments), but there seems to be no %_. <p> Perl does reserve this symbol, however: <code> russ@MyLinuxBox:~$ perl -w my %_ = (a => 1, b => 2); Can't use global %_ in "my" at - line 1, near "my %_" </code> Since I find no mention of it in `man perlvar`, nor in any other man page I've searched...nor in any book I own, this may make an interesting SoPW question. <p> So, what does it do (if anything)?<br> Should I avoid using it, and if so, why? <p> Russ <p> P.S. My intention was to store incoming "named arguments" (see <a href="">Object Oriented Perl</a> by Damian Conway p. 31) in an idiomatic fashion. <code> sub mySub{ my %Defaults = (Name => 'Russ', Job => 'Programmer', Language =? 'Perl'); my %_ = (%Defaults, @_); # Warning, this does not compile! ### #(Now use %_ as my argument list) ### print "The name is: $_{Name}\n"; } </code>