Comment by AnimalMuppet

Perl is interesting because it was written by a linguist. It's the only language I know of where you can say "it".

Here's what I mean: I'm talking to another developer. I say, "Read in a line of input. If it ends in a newline, remove the newline." I can talk like that to a developer.

But when I talk to a computer, it says, "Read in a line of input? From where? And put it where? If 'it' ends in a newline? If what ends in a newline?" You can't talk to a computer that way...

Except in Perl. In Perl, you say, "Read in a line of input. I didn't specify where, so read in from the standard place[1]. I didn't specify where to put it, either, so put it in the default variable[2]. Then call chomp, which if I don't specify, will operate on the default variable."

[1] The default input is the files specified as command-line arguments, in order.

[2] The default variable, $_, is used when you don't specify a different variable. $_ plays the linguistic role of "it" - it's what you're talking about when you don't specify what you're talking about.