Jeremy Howard wrote:
>
> > we are after SIMPLE syntax. This means like C, Fortran, IDL and Matlab.
> > Perl is about working like most people expect.
> >
> Yes, we are after simple syntax. We also want to make to hard things
> possible. Therefore we want a syntax that is also flexible.
>
> > To access a single element we want
> >
> > $a[$i,$j,$k]
> >
> But this already means "the $i, $j, and $k" elements of a list. It is a very
> frequently used construct--I think that changing it will be impossible, and
> that creating a new data type that acts contrary to this would be highly
> confusing.
As I said we can use other characters, I am warming to the ; proposal.
I am happy with @ for slices and $ for single elements assuming the deref
stuff can be resolved.
I am anxious to avoid too many levels of brackets as they just look plain
ugly.
$a[$i;$j;$k] for a single element would do it for me, and @[10..20;10..20]
for a slice.
I don't believe we should bend over backwards not to break any existing perl5
syntax, that was done for perl4->perl5 and had led to all kinds of uglyness.
Karl
