What are common pitfalls or gotchas with here-docs?

Here-docs in Perl can be extremely useful for handling multi-line strings, but there are several common pitfalls and gotchas that developers should be aware of:

  • Variable Interpolation: If you don’t want variables to be interpolated, use single quotes or a non-interpolating identifier.
  • Ending Delimiter: Ensure that the ending delimiter is placed on a line by itself with no additional characters or whitespace.
  • Indentation: Be careful with indentation; leading whitespace before the ending delimiter can result in syntax errors or unexpected behavior.
  • Escaping Characters: Special characters like backslashes need to be escaped if they are meant to be included literally.

Keywords: Perl here-docs multi-line strings variable interpolation syntax errors