Scalar Variables and Operators

Single Quoted String Literals

• Valid Perl strings are sequences of zero or more characters.
• The longest possible Perl string is one that fills all available system memory. Perl is weird this way. I mean that endearingly.
• Any of the 256 ASCII characters are legal to use in Perl strings. There is nothing special about the NULL (0x00) value. This is different then C, which uses this character to indicate the end of a string.
• Single quoted string literals consist of every character between the starting and ending quote, with no interpretation being performed. There are only two exceptions to this. To get a backslash character into a single quoted string, precede it with another backslash. To get a single quote into a single quoted string, precede it with a backslash.
• Example single quoted strings (shown as string literals):
  

   
  'hello'           # hello
  'hello world'     # hello, a space, and world
  'Hit the \\ key to continue'   # Hit the \ key to continue
  'Perl\'s Diner'   # Perl's Diner
  'Hello \nWorld'   # Literally Hello \nWorld (no internal newline)
  'Welcome
  To
  Perl'  # Welcome, newline, To, newline, Perl.