By default, running out of memory is an untrappable, fatal error. However, if suitably built, Perl can use the contents of$^M as an emergency memory pool afterdie()ing. Suppose that your Perl were compiled with-DPERL_EMERGENCY_SBRK and used Perl's malloc. Then
$^M = 'a' x (1 << 16);would allocate a 64K buffer for use in an emergency. See theINSTALL file in the Perl distribution for information on how to add custom C compilation flags when compiling perl. To discourage casual use of this advanced feature, there is noEnglish long name for this variable.
This variable was added in Perl 5.004.
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