Whimsical Question

Perlers,

I just got a copy of Intermediate Perl (the updated version of Learning
Perl Objects, References, and Modules, aka Alpaca) and started reading.
I've been coding Perl for about 18 months now and every time I see '$_'
I immediately understand its use in the context of the code, but I don't
know its name. I realized this after reading over example code in the
Alpaca and it got me to wondering: _Is_ there a name for '$_' ? For
example, when I see '#!', I read 'shebang' and it rolls off the tongue,
but 'dollar underscore' is clumsy. Does anyone know if a name exists?
If not, do any of you have pet name for it?

I know this is a whimsical (and possibly esoteric) question but I
figured it might generate some fun threads.

ry
.

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