This and other RFCs are available on the web at
http://dev.perl.org/rfc/
=head1 TITLE
Make length(@array) work
=head1 VERSION
Maintainer: Nathan Torkington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sep 12 2000
Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Number: 212
Version: 1
Status: Developing
=head1 ABSTRACT
length(@foo) should return the number of elements in
@foo.
=head1 DESCRIPTION
Presently length() has a prototype of ($) which means it coerces its
argument into scalar context. Many newbies think of the number of
elements in an array as its "length", and try to use this function.
Instead of the size of the array, they get a rough base-10 logarityhm
of the number of elements.
I propose to make length() return the number of elements in the array
it is passed, if its first argument begins with @.
=head1 IMPLEMENTATION
The optimizer could replace
length @array
with
scalar(@array)
The perl526 converter could replace
length @array
with
length scalar(@array)
=head1 REFERENCES
perlfunc for documentation on length() function
