Rubenerd: Say what, Perl?

Unlike in other languages, Perl's default print function doesn't print newlines by default. This is often desirable, such as in this case:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
print("Please enter your name: ");
my $name = <STDIN>;

The resulting prompt will have the user type their name on the same line.

Please enter your name: Tousaka Rin

In situations where you want a newline, you use the standard \n:

print("Zettai Ryouiki FTW\n");
print("Tousakaaaaaa!\n");

This was the subject of ridicule from my Ruby development friends in the past, so in 2010 I presented a function that did the same thing. Recent Perl versions have an even shorter function name, with the say command. The following will print the same as the above:

say("Zettai Ryouiki FTW");
say("Tousakaaaaaaa!")

You can use this in your scripts today by requiring at least Perl 5.10, or explicitly enabling the feature:

use 5.010;
use feature qw(say);

Done, and done.

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