What is the benefit of Sigils in Perl? : <p>I understand the rules with sigils. I can make hashes from lists, and pass refs around with the mediocre-ist of them. What I don't understand are the <em>benefits</em> sigils provide in Perl. </p>

<p>Some of the reasons I've heard are:</p>

<ul>
<li>String Interpolation

<ul>
<li>Ruby has the "#{myVar}" syntax, which solves almost <em>all</em> of these issues, including having full expressions without having to resort to the "@{[$count + 1]}" syntactical hack.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Readibility

<ul>
<li>IDEs. And any text editor worth its weight in salt has syntax highlighting.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Allowing for variable subNamespacing

<ul>
<li>Allowing me to declare $foo and @foo as two different variables will only lead to ruin in the future. </li>
</ul></li>
</ul>

<p>One <em>very</em> helpful feature in a programming language is consistency. My curiosity drives me to ask if I declare a list as "@foos", and a counter "$count", how does it make sense to need to access elements by saying "$foos[$count]"? Oh! But I may use the "@" if I'm reading elements out into list context; so saying "@foos[$idx1, $idx2]" now makes sense! I can tell from looking at the sigil that I'm going to be reading an array instead of a single scalar!</p>

<ul>
<li>I can still tell I'm reading a single element by saying "foos[count]"</li>
<li>I can still tell I'm reading multiple elements by saying "foos[idx1, idx2]". </li>
<li>I can still tell I'm reading a single value by saying "foos{key}"</li>
<li>I can still tell I'm reading multiple values by saying "foos{key1, key2}"</li>
</ul>

<p>This same pattern holds true for almost any case I can think of. The meaning of what is being done is clear no matter which sigil is being used, or none for that matter. The only difference is that I have to keep track of the context and be sure to keep sigils in line <em>as well</em>; </p>
