4.2. Words

When printing a list of words to STDOUT, it is helpful to understand how Perl views a word. Any unquoted word must start with an alphanumeric character. It can consist of other alphanumeric characters and an underscore. Perl words are case sensitive. If a word is unquoted, it could conflict with words used to identify filehandles, labels, and other reserved words. If you see the error "Bareword," it means that the word has not been surrounded by quotes. If the word has no special meaning to Perl, it will be treated as if surrounded by single quotes.