Hrm, and I didn't get any notice for having another solution that is as short as your function, and having one that is 1 better on the command line?

Guess I will have to improve then.

#23456789_123456789_123456789_12345
perl -le'$x=@_=a..j;print$x--for@_'

sub f {
#23456789_123456789_12345678
$x=@_=a..j;print$x--.$/for@_
}
[download]

UPDATE
The answer to the question is "tradition". :-)

UPDATE 2
jmcnamara pointed out that I was miscounting. Fixed.