Variable containers in Perl 6

There are three basic types of variable containers: scalars, arrays, and hashes. First, you will learn the basics of how to use them in code. Then, later in this chapter, in the Using built-in data types section, we will take a deeper look at the data types available in the language.

The structural type of the container is expressed by a special character called sigil. It always stands before the variable name and, in many cases, may be considered a part of it.

The name of the variable is an identifier. An identifier is a string of alphabetic characters, digits, underscore characters, and hyphens. The first character cannot be a digit or a hyphen. Alphanumeric characters are understood in the Unicode sense, so, together with hyphens, it is possible to create very expressive variable names. The identifiers are case-sensitive.

In the following sections, you will see examples of naming the variables. Notice that a variable is always preceded by a sigil, while bare identifiers may be function or class names, as we will see in other chapters of this book.