uh... '->' is used as a dereferencer also, but I also dereference my code as so..
$value = $$ref2hash{'key'}; @slice = @$ref2array[0 .. 2]; I really need to find the time to read the Articles but between work and taxes.... > -----Original Message----- > From: Chas Owens [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 10:55 AM > To: Timothy Johnson > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: perl6 > > > On Thu, 2002-04-04 at 10:39, Timothy Johnson wrote: > > > > At the risk of beating a dead and bloated horse, I have no > doubt that I will > > enjoy and take advantages of the improvements in Perl6, but > I still don't > > see the logic in changing operators. I mean, why make old > code unusable? > > If you can make a Perl5->6 converter, why can't you > integrate Perl5 code > > into Perl6? Like I said, I have no doubt that I will use > the many new > > features of Perl6 and enjoy them, but I think that sums up > a lot of the gut > > reactions of people that I have spoken to. > > > <snip /> > > Okay, on the walk into work this morning I thought of another > reason why > the operators are changing: Huffman encoding. The reason Perl looks > like line noise to many people is because the language tries > to save the > programmer keystrokes for commonly used things. With that in mind I > wrote a quick script and through all of the perl code in my home > directory at it to find out how often I use '->' vs '.' in > Perl 5. The > results came to about 7 to 1 in favor of '->'. According to the rules > of Huffman encoding that means that '->' should be shorter than '.'. > Add on to that the fact that '.' is used by most languages to mean > "member of" and you have a no-brainer. Now, I use hash > references like > water so YMMV. > > <script> > #!/usr/bin/perl -ln > > $arrow += /->/g; > $period += /\./g; > > END { > print "arrows occured $arrow times"; > print "periods occured $period times"; > } > </script> > > <output> > arrows occured 1263 times > periods occured 173 times > </output> > > -- > Today is Setting Orange the 22nd day of Discord in the YOLD 3168 > P'tang! > > Missile Address: 33:48:3.521N 84:23:34.786W > > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------- The views and opinions expressed in this email message are the sender's own, and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Summit Systems Inc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]