Re: RFC - Interpolation of method calls

[Nathan Wiger]

Tom Christiansen wrote:
> 
> Funny--I always think of them as function calls, and don't expect
> function calls to expand.

I doubt anyone's arguing that they're not function calls. What I find
"surprising" is that Perl doesn't DWIM here. It doesn't encourage data
encapsulation or try to make it easy:

   my $weather = new Schwern::Example;
   print "Today's weather will be $weather->{temp} degrees and sunny.";
   print "And tomorrow we'll be expecting ", $weather->forecast;

If method calls interpolated, this would be easier. Instead, it
encourages you to provide direct hash access to your data since it's
much easier to use that way.

I find myself wanting to say:

   print "Thanks, $cgi->param('name') for your order!";
   print "It matched" if /$config->get_expression/;

Rather than:

   print "Thanks, " . $cgi->param('name') . " for your order";

   my($tmp_exp) = $config->get_expression;
   print "It matched" if /$tmp_exp/;

So often it almost hurts. This proposal makes things easier. And to me
it remains quite consistent if we say:

   -> is always special, even in qq//, just like $ and @

For hashrefs and arrayrefs, this already appears to be true anyways.

-Nate