leviathan on A nice, little known C feature: Static array indices in parameter declarations

Calling a sub with & has a special meaning, it exposes the current argument list @_ to the called sub. That's why you don't see it in most code.

I did not know that. Interesting. However, it only works if you call the sub without parentheses like this: &foo

Calling it with parentheses like &foo() would make @_ empty inside of foo. (Or if you said &foo("whatever") it would pass that as @_ instead.)

    sub while
    {
            print "@_\n";
            &foo();
    }

    sub foo
    {
            print "@_\n";
    }

    &while("a","b","c");

produces:

    a b c
    (blank line)

as the output, and

    sub while
    {
            print "@_\n";
            &foo;
    }

    sub foo
    {
            print "@_\n";
    }

    &while("a","b","c");

produces:

    a b c
    a b c

as the output. At any rate, back to the original topic: it still doesn't prevent new keywords from potentially colliding. Oh well.

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